Question

To counteract the frog population spike, the parks department has decided to introduce a large number of predator fish into their habitat. They have purchased 12,000 fish to stock the bodies of water.

What is this number in scientific notation?

Answer 1

1.2 x 10⁴

Explanation:

12,000 has 2 places of other numbers before a spam of zeroes.

Take the numbers before zeroes and put a decimal to the left of the last digit.

Last digit is 2 so a decimal goes before 2

1.2

Count how many places the decimal moved: this number is your power of 10.

12000. --> 1.2000

It moved 4 places.

12,000 = 1.2 x 10⁴