Powers of Ten Tutorial

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In working problems in astronomy, you will often encounter very big or very small numbers. For example, the number of stars in our galaxy the Milky Way is about 100 billion. Large numbers like 100 billion are cumbersome to write out in ordinary form (100,000,000,000) and so scientists use a shorthand notation called powers of ten. In powers of ten notation, large numbers are written using ten to a power, or exponent. The exponent tells you how many times ten is to be multiplied by iteslf to equal the number you wish to write. For example, 100 can be written as 10x10 = 10². 10,000 = 10x10x10x10x10 = 10⁴. Notice that the exponent of the ten is simply the number of the zeros.

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