The number 50.775 has how many significant figures?

Answer 1

• 5. Count all digits except trailing zeros. So 50.775 has 5 significant Figures. 50.775000 has 5 as does 507750000. Remeber only discount trailing zeros so 50.775001 has 8 sigificant figures.

Right answer, wrong explanation :)

According to Wikipedia, trailing zeros after the dp aresignificant. 50.775000 therefore has 8. The logic is that you could have written it as 50.775 so the fact you bothered to write it with the zeros means that it is accurate to 6 decimal places.

Your 507750000 has 5 significant figures as you say but 507750000 with the tens digit emphasised in some way has 8. The logic is that the emphasis means the zero really is zero, so everything up to it is significant.

507750000. has 9: the dp is numerically superfluous but means that all the digits before it are significant.

00507750000 officially has 5 but there must be some reason it's been written with leading zeros so it may be taken to have 7. Typically this would be done to stop the number of sig figs from jumping around with different values.

"Significant figures" is a slightly woolly concept!

Answer 2

4 significant figures.

Answer 3

5 of them.

Answer 4

6 of them.

Answer 5

Five

Answer 6

Six.

Answer 7

5