Exponents and Powers Exponents | Speed Notes

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Exponents are used to express large numbers in shorter form to make them easy to read, understand, compare and operate upon. (Scroll down to continue …)

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Expressing Large Numbers in the Standard Form: Any number can be expressed as a decimal number between 1.0 and 10.0 (including 1.0) multiplied by a power of 10. Such form of a number is called its standard form or scientific motion. Very large numbers are difficult to read, understand, compare and operate upon. To make all these easier, we use exponents, converting many of the large numbers in a shorter form. The following are exponential forms of some numbers?

Here, 10, 3 and 2 are the bases, whereas 4, 5 and 7 are their respective exponents. We also say, 10,000 is the 4th power of 10, 243 is the 5th power of 3, etc. Numbers in exponential form obey certain laws, which are: For any non-zero integers a and b and whole numbers m and n,

(g) (–1) even number = 1 (–1) odd number = – 1