“Write 230,000,000,000 in scientific notation,” Abigail read
the next problem on Knox’s assigned homework. Since meeting up with him at noon
as promised they’d only gotten as far as the fifth problem; five out of
twenty-five. Abigail had quickly lost patience with the numerous bad jokes and
sexual innuendoes continuously spouting from Knox’s mouth.
It was close to 3:00 p.m. and she was ready to get out of
there and find a more constructive use of her time. “Easy, 23 x 100!”
“Actually the proper rule is ‘Ax10n’. ‘A’
represents the real number, in this case 2.3 and 10n represents the number
of times you move the decimal. You count those and place them after the 10 as
an exponent. The answer would be 2.3 x 1011.”
