homework help: I really need help my math homework is hard some stuff like scientific notation one example is: 15*10 to the 3rd power so hard! - Help.com

What exactly is the question??

A number is in scientific notation whenever it is expressed as a base multiplied by a power of ten.

For instance, 15 * 10^3 = 15 * 1,000 = 15,000.

The best way to explain is to understand why people use scientific notation in the first place. It allows you to express very big or very small numbers simply as a power of ten, without having to write out the whole thing. Let’s take a very big number, like a billion

1 billion = 1,000,000,000.

Now, this number equals ten multiplied by itself nine times; in other words, 10^9. If I wanted to express five billion, I could simply say “five multiplied by ten to the ninth power”, or 5*10^9.

Eight billion would be 8*10^9

Twenty-seven billion would be 27*10^9, but it is more conventional to leave only one digit in front of the decimal point in the base, so twenty-seven billion is actually written as 2.7*10^10.

Each higher power of ten moves the decimal place one digit further to the right. Each lower power of ten moves it one space further to the left.