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Scientific Notation with a Calculator

Added Aug 29, 2018 •

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okay this video will look at how to handle scientific notation in your calculator as a teacher I've seen a lot of students working with their calculators and seen a lot of mistakes in the way that people put things in often times those poor methods for entering numbers into the calculator don't cause problems but especially with division division is the one place where if you don't put the scientific notation in correctly or you don't use correct mathematical operation order of operations then he's going to run into problems and will everything will be correct when you go to the calculator you'll end up with the correct answer even with all of the work correct so just give an example where you would run into problems let's take a look at this calculation 8.8 times 10 to the fourth divided by 2.0 x 10 to the second okay so I'm going to move this out of the way 8.8 x 10 to the fourth divided by the quantity 2 .0 x 10 to the 2nd so we'll bring the calculator back in and typically what I see most students do is something like that so they type in the 8.8 and then they want to let the calculator tool looks like the way that the the calculation looks on the paper so what they will typically do is they'll say * 10 karat to the fourth divided by 2.0 * 10 to the second I'm sure many of you have done in this manner and when I hit the enter button it gives me an answer except that is not the correct answer and the problem with it is that the order of operations with this calculator has is it made the multiplication 8.8 x 10 to the 4th it treated those as two separate numbers so it actually made the calculation and multiply these two betta / 2.0 everything so far is good but then the last rather than dividing the 10 to the second end of the top number it actually X the top number so as a result instead of it should have reduced the size of the number by two zeros but instead of two the opposite added two zeros so what should have happened is an added these two zeros when what it should have done was subtracted these two zeros which would have taken us down to answer I've only 440 so the best way to do it is your calculator has a scientific notation feature built into it just need to know how to use it so am I calculator I'm going to zoom in just a little bit so am I calculator that scientific notation feature is right here on the, as a secondary feature so you'll see the letters e e GE represent the * 10 portion of the scientific notation so let's go back out just a little bit Amber reader circulation in this time we'll use the scientific notation feature of the calculator so the first number was 8.8 this time instead of saying * 10 what I'm going to do is second function eating now that he represents the times 10 and if you wanted even include the the carrot so all I need now is to put in the exponent so I'm going to put in the factor the beginning and I'm going to put in the exponent on the order magnitude that's for and so the way this number reads is 8.8 * 10 to the 4th now and I do / 2.0 and I file the same method second function eb-2 2.0 x 10 to the 2 and hit enter I get for 40 which is the correct answer so difference in the two calculations is that your calculator trees 8.8 e to the 4th as a single number and it treats 2.08 of the two as a single number so when it divides there's no order of operations in the previous calculation it treated so there were four separate numbers 8.8 the 10 to the 4th the 2.0 and the 10 to the two so but using the scientific notation feature of your calculator much less likely that you're going to make a calculator mistake if you really insist you could make this this method work what you need to do is to put everything into parentheses so if I say * 10 carat to the fourth divided by parentheses 2.0 * 10 karat to the second and parentheses to see I do get the correct answer I still get 4:40 but if you look at how much longer this notation is it was already longer before I even put in the front seat and now it made it almost twice as long as the calculation is more buttons to push it's a lot more work it's more to think about so if you just use the scientific notation feature of your calculator you really reduce those calculator mistakes and I'll make scientific notation to so much easier to work with

Uploaded by Shane Crone.

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Scientific Notation with a Calculator

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