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Scientific notation is a way of writing very large or very small numbers in a compact form. Instead of writing 602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000, you write 6.022 x 10²³. The number before the "x" (the coefficient) must be at least 1 but less than 10, and the exponent tells you how many places to move the decimal point.
Scientific notation always uses a coefficient between 1 and 10 (like 4.7 x 10&sup5;). Engineering notation restricts the exponent to multiples of 3 (so 470 x 10³ instead of 4.7 x 10&sup5;), which maps directly to SI prefixes like kilo, mega, and giga. E notation is how computers and calculators write it (4.7E+5), replacing "x 10^" with "E".
To convert a standard number to scientific notation, move the decimal point until you have a number between 1 and 10. Count the places you moved it: that is your exponent. If you moved left, the exponent is positive. If you moved right, it is negative. For example, 0.00045 becomes 4.5 x 10⁻&sup4; because the decimal moved 4 places to the right.