Flashcard 1 - Upper Level: Quantitative Reasoning Flashcard Set for the ISEE

Move the decimal \(9\) places to the right so that the resulting number is greater than \(1\), but less than \(10\) (\(4.56\), in this case).
The exponent a is \(-9\) because we moved the decimal \(9\) spaces to the right.

Scientific notation is written in the standard form:

where N is a number greater than 1 but less than 10; and a is a positive or negative integer determined by the number of spaces the decimal point was moved to get N.

Moving the decimal to the left results in a positive exponent; moving it to the right results in a negative exponent.