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Why in engineering you use engineering notation instead of scientific notation?
Wiki User
∙ 11y ago
Sometimes engineers use either scientific or engineering notation, although you are correct that most of the time engineering notation is used. The reason for this the use if greek letter prefixes for quantities. Very often large and small quantities are expressed as micro, mega, giga, nano, and so on. These terms relate to engineering notation in multiples of 1000 or 1/1000. It is a very convenient shorthand not only in writing but also while speaking.
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∙ 11y ago
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What is engineering notation?
Scientific notation is a way to "easily" or "conveniently" write very large or very small numbers. As these numbers are frequently encountered in the sciences, the term scientific notation was introduced to name this "neat" way to "package" these quantities so that they might be more easily grasped and understood.Scientific notation is a useful way of dealing with very large and very small numbers. It allows them to be presented in a form where their magnitude can be seen more easily. Also it can simplify calculations by allowing you to concentrate on the significant digits rather than the orders of magnitude which are very easily dealt with. This latter advantage has somewhat diminished with the widespread availability of calculators and computers. But previously, people used log tables and slide rules for multiplication and division. These calculating devices depended on thinking of numbers in their scientific notation and utilizing the significant digits.The Form of Scientific NotationThe idea behind scientific notation is to write numbers in terms of powers of ten - either positive (for very large numbers), or negative (for very small ones). As an example, consider the mass of an electron, which is approximately 0.0000000000000000000000000001 grams. An easier way to write it uses the significant digit 1 and an exponent based on a multiple of ten. The number becomes the easily represented 1 x 10-28 g.The simple rule is to take your "numbers" and move the decimal point to the left or right so that only one figure is to the left of the decimal. Then write the rest of the significant digits to the right of the decimal, and tack on the appropriate power of ten (again, either positive or negative) to restore the proper value to the figure.Coefficient and Base in Scientific NotationScientific Notation also avoids the headache and potential errors of counting lots of zeros.The number 123000000 in scientific notation is written as:1.23 x 108The first number 1.23 is called the coefficient. It is always a single digit followed by a decimal point and then the rest, but usually only two digits.The second number is called the base and in scientific notation must always be 10. In the number 1.23 x 108 the number 8 is the exponent or power of ten.How to Write a Number in Scientific NotationFor large numbers :1) Put the decimal after the first digit and drop the zeroes. In the number 123,000,000 the coefficient will be 1.232) Then write the times "x" and the base 10.3) To find the exponent count the number of places from the "new" decimal point to the end of the number. In 123000000 there are 8 places. Therefore the exponent is 8.There are some minor variations that have evolved to fill different needs, usually because not all fonts or printers allow superscripts: 123000000 can be written as:1.23 E+11 or 1.23 X 10^11 or 1.23 x 1011For small numbers :For numbers less than one we use a similar approach. These numbers all have negative exponents. For example 0.00000123 second (1.23 microseconds) is written:1.23 E-6 or 1.23 x 10^-6 or 1.23 x 10-6Take the original number 0.00000123 and shift the decimal point to the right until you get the coefficient in proper form, as above. The number of digits shifted is then the negative exponent.Notes:a) Numbers less than one all use negative exponents, but what about negative numbers, such as -0.04? We can write this as-4.0 x 10-2b) Always make sure the E is capitalized in 1.23 E-6, otherwise it can be confused with "e" the base of the natural log system.c) Some scientific and engineering fields have special rules, such as electronics where scientific notation is usually in powers divisible by three, such as -3, 3, 6, 9, 12, etc. This is because electronic components are made using standard SI prefixes such as kilo, micro, nano, or pico.d) Usually, Scientific Notation is ignored if you want to keep numbers in common formats, such as 315 microseconds, instead of 3.15 x 10-4 seconds, but this is a matter of preference.Scientific notation is normally used for numbers that are either far to large or far to small to be written conveniently in decimal notation.A,BFor example the Earth's mass is approximately: 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000,000.0 kgIn scientific notation this would be written as:5.9736 x 1024 kg.In normalised scientific notation numbers are written in the form:A,Ba x 10nWhere:a is a number between 1 and 10n is a positive or negative whole number.In engineering notation, the n value is commonly in the form of multiples of 3. In this way the number will always explicitly match the corresponding SI prefixes.BFor example a distance of 50,000 m would be written as:Scientific Notation: 5 x 104 mEngineering notation: 50 x 103 mIn this example 103 corresponds to the SI prefix "kilo"C as such the engineering notation could be directly described verbally as "fifty kilometres" whereas scientific notation yields the much more unwieldy "five times ten to the power four metres" which is much less intuitively easy to understand, even though it is exactly the same distance.Guidance on converting to and from scientific notation is given in the related links. Specifically References A and B.References:A Scientific notation - Engineering Maths Help from the 'mathcentre' Academic Website.B Scientific notation: Wikipedia Entry.C List of SI prefixes: Wikipedia Entry.Please see related links.
What is 847 in engineering notation?
Engineers tend to use the most appropriate notation for a given situation, and in many situations, 847 will be a perfectly fine way of expressing the number 847 for an engineer.The expected answer to this question most probably is 0.847E3 though, which indicates a base number (0.847) is to be multiplied by 10 to the power of 3 (103=1000), thus 0.845E3 = 0.847 * 103 = 847.Engineering notation becomes more appealing with much larger numbers, or numbers much smaller than one (regardless of the number's sign). As a rule of thumb, you should consider using engineering notation for numbers that make you squint and count the zeroes. Straight-forward numbers such as 847 do not benefit from such complication. Engineers are pragmatic people.
Engineering drawing what types do you use when interrelate?
I don't use engineering drawings.... I guess?!
What is common to all fields of engineering?
Use of the engineering process
What is theoretical engineering?
Speaking as a young, self taught software engineer, Googling the issue it seems that there is no straight answer yet. Lots of people shoot the idea down as it being physics but that isn't really true since:Physics is mostly about studying how the world works, not getting the most out of itGenetic engineering, highway engineering, software engineering, social engineering etc... All have little to no direct use of "pure" physics to my knowledge.Personally I think that when theoretical engineering is defined it will have a general thinking process that goes as follows:We have this starting point and this desired outcome. The relationship can be explained by this piece of notation that looks like maths but isn't.We will need components that follow these not exactly mathematical behaviors.And we'll combine them as described here.
Why do you use engineering notation in electronics rather than scientific notation?
Sometimes engineers use either scientific or engineering notation, although you are correct that most of the time engineering notation is used. The reason for this the use if greek letter prefixes for quantities. Very often large and small quantities are expressed as micro, mega, giga, nano, and so on. These terms relate to engineering notation in multiples of 1000 or 1/1000. It is a very convenient shorthand not only in writing but also while speaking.Read more: Why_in_engineering_you_use_engineering_notation_instead_of_scientific_notation
When using scientific notation what exponents do you use?
In scientific notation, you use exponents divisible by 3. For example, 12,750 is 12.75 × 10³ instead of 1.275 × 10⁴.
Why do you have scientific notation?
Scientific notation makes it easier to express numbers of extremely small or large magnitude. For example, we could either say that something is .00000000068 meters long, or simply use scientific notation to write it as 6.8 x 10-10 meters. There is also an "engineering" notation which is similar to scientific notation, but all exponents are multiples of 3. This is so we can introduce prefixes such as nano, micro, kilo, giga, etc. The number 573000 would be written as 5.73 x 105 in scientific notation, and 573 x 103 in engineering notation.
Do psychologist use scientific notation?
psychologist do not usually use scientific notation
What fields use scientific notation?
Mostly the sciences use scientific notation
Do physicists use scientific notation?
Yes, physicists use scientific notation
What is the importance of scientific notation?
it is important to us to use scientific notation because if we use it we can read the numbers easily. Scientific notation is important because it make writing numbers easier. For example, you are contestant in a quiz bee and the examiner says,134000000000000x500000000000 or something like that you will lost time writing zeroes and you will also confused about it instead we can just write it in a scientific notation.
How do judges use scientific notation?
Judges usually don't use scientific notation.
Why would I prefer scientific notation instead of standard notation if I'm a biologist?
Scientific notation is especially useful if you use very large numbers, or very small numbers (numbers close to zero). I am not sure whether biologists commonly use such numbers, though.
What is the scientific notation and why is it useful?
You use scientific notation when it comes to "too large" or "too small" numbers. The reasons why using scientific notation is useful are that it saves time to do the computation and also that it makes people's life easier to compute values instead of writing them out completely!
What professions use scientific notation?
People in the sciences are the main professions that use scientific notation
How can you scientific notation to solve real world problems?
Scientific notation is useful for very large or very small numbers. If you use such numbers in your "real world", then scientific notation will be very useful. This may be the case, for example, when you work in science or engineering. Otherwise, if you don't work in an area that uses such large or small numbers, you probably won't find much use for them.
