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The term is interpreted as 0.0008.

The goal here is to move the decimal place right next to the leading nonzero digit. For instance, if we want to convert 0.0008 to scientific notation, we move 4 decimal places to the right, so it turns out to be:

8.0 x 10-4

To understand why the exponent is negative, know the basics of multiplying the value by 10's. If we have only decimal values, such as 0.0008, then the exponent must turn out to be negative. That is because the value 8.0 is divided by 104 or 10000 as we have determined. This means that you move 4 decimal places from the starting point.

8/10000 = 0.0008.

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12y ago

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