a method for expressing a given quantity as a number having significant digits necessary for a specified degree of accuracy, multiplied by 10 to the appropriate power, as 1385.62 written as 1.386 × 10 3 .
Origin
1960-65
Examples from the web for scientific notation
For correct scientific notation, only the significant digits are written.
scientific notation in Science
scientific notation A method of expressing numbers in terms of a decimal number between 1 and 10 multiplied by a power of 10. The scientific notation for 10,492, for example, is 1.0492 × 104.