Science Common Sense


1406 - What units are used to express different scales, such as length units, and how do scientists use scientific notation to express sizes?

Imagine you have different rulers for measuring things. Here are some units used for measuring different scales:

Scientists use something called scientific notation to easily express very big or very small numbers.

It looks like this: 4.23 x 10^5.

For example, the distance from the Earth to the Sun is 149,600,000 kilometers. Using scientific notation, it's written as 1.496 x 10^8 kilometers.