Algebra 1 Word Problem? Short?
if your DNA was unraveled and laid end to end. it would reach the moon and back 4 times. a trip their and back is 93 million miles. How many miles would it be there and back 4 times in scientific notation? thanks was absent today 
Comments
Scientific notation is usually written as A times 10^x where A is a number between 1 and 10.
To start, let's multiply 4 and 93 million to get the total miles.
4 x 93,000,000 = 372,000,000
Now, we need to start with some number between 1 and 10. Look at the first number of our total. It is 3.
So it's going to start with 3 times 10^x. However, scientific notation includes all the significant digits. Zeroes are usually place holders, in this case, the zeroes are at the end of the number and there are no significant digits in between them, so the zeroes are NOT significant. But the 7 and the 2 are important.
In order to keep the first part of scientific notation since we need to include the 7 and the 2, we need to write this as a decimal. It becomes 3.72.
Now, starting at the decimal place, we need to move it towards the right. Every time you move it to the right one space, you are multiplying it by 10. Moving it once is multiplying by 10^1. Moving it twice is 10^2, three times is 10^3 and so on. Look back at the answer of 372,000,000 and count how many zeroes you have. That means once that you move the decimal to the right of the 2, you need to move it 6 more times (for the 6 zeroes).
3.72 x 10^8 is your answer
93 times 4 = 372 million miles. So 3.72X10^8