Standard Form

In science we often find ourselves having to write very small or large numbers. Writing the mass of a fly as 0.00005 kg, or the radius of Earth as 6,000,000 m looks messy and can be easily misread, so often we use standard form.

A number in standard form has the general appearance of a ×10ⁿ.

• a is a number between one and ten.

• n is the magnitude of the number.

So, in standard form, the mass of a fly is 5 × 10^-5 kg, and the radius of Earth is 6 ×10⁶ m. In Figure 1 you can see how writing in standard form can save you a lot of time and space on your page.

Figure 1. Comparing standard form and writing out full numbers at extreme scales.