Why is scientific notation is used with large numbers?

Answer 1

It can simplify writing very large numbers. For example, a googol, which is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (and there may be a mistake there!) can be written ever so simply as 1*10^100.

A googol maybe a curiosity but there are physical constants such as Avogadro's number which is 6.022140857*10^23, or a light year, which is 9.4607*10^15 metres where it is easy to make a mistake in the number of zeros..

Answer 2

Scientific notation is used with large numbers because it allows for a more concise representation of these numbers. It consists of expressing a number as the product of a coefficient and a power of 10, where the coefficient is between 1 and 10. This makes it easier to comprehend and work with extremely large numbers, as the power of 10 indicates the number of zeros following the coefficient.