Things to Learn:

  • Know that positive powers of 10 are very large numbers, and negative powers of 10 are very small numbers.
  • Know that the exponent of an expression provides information about the magnitude of a number.
On the census clock at the left click on the World Population tab. Use the World Population estimate rounded to the nearest 10,000 people for the following exercise.

national debt

Some Very Large Numbers

[shc_shortcode class=”shc_mybox”]Fact 1: The number `10^n`, for arbitrarily large positive integers `n`, is a big number in the sense that given a number `M` (no matter how big it is), there is a power of `10` that exceeds `M`.
Fact 2: The number `10^(-n)`, for arbitrarily large positive integers `n`, is a small number in the sense that given a positive number `S` (no matter how small it is), there is a (negative) power of `10` that is smaller than `S`.[/shc_shortcode]

Exercise and Practice(PDF printable)

Before You Go