Question

How do you find the scientific notation for a decimal?

Answer 1

Assuming you are talking about a number greater than 1, you would do this the same way you find the scientific notation for a positive integer.

The key is to respect the scientific notation formula `a * 10^n` where `1 <= a < 10`

Let us take a decimal such as 645.789. To get a where `1 <= a < 10`, we need to move the decimal place 2 spots to the left.

Which is the same as dividing by `10^2 = 100`

So we have `6.4578 * 10^2` as our scientific notation of 645.789.

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