Video Transcript
There are approximately 200 million
cows in India. Express this number in scientific
notation.
Letβs firstly consider how we would
write the number 200 million. The number one million is written
as a one followed by six zeros. This means that 200 million can be
written as 200 followed by another six zeros. Altogether, we have two followed by
eight zeros. A number is written in scientific
notation if it is written in the form π multiplied by 10 to the power of π. The absolute value, or modulus, of
π must be less than 10 and greater than or equal to one. The value of π can be a positive
or negative integer.
In order to write a number in
scientific notation, we firstly put a decimal point after the first nonzero
digit. In this question, this is the first
digit, two. As the digit after this is a zero,
our value for π will be 2.0, or just two. In order to find the value of the
exponent π, we need to work out what we multiply two by to give us 200000000. We can do this using place value or
by counting how many times the decimal point moves till it gets to the end of our
number.
In this question, there are eight
bounces, or eight place values. This means that our exponent is
eight. As already mentioned, 2.0 is the
same as two. So, the number 200 million in
scientific notation is two multiplied by 10 to the power of eight. This is approximately the number of
cows in India.
