“A Note on the Science of Notation”
(as Dr. Seuss might say it)
Have you seen numbers that stretch down the hall?
They’re terribly long and impossibly tall!
Like this one, I found it while sipping my tea:
90,000,000,000,003!
Now what do we do with a number so wide?
We shrink it right down—let’s compress it with pride!
We’ll find the first digit that isn’t a zero,
The “9” in the front—our place-value hero!
We slide a small dot so there’s one in the lead,
Like 9.0000000000003 (what a read!).
Then we count how far that dot had to hop—
From the start to the spot where it came to a stop.
It hopped 13 places! So here’s what we say:
9.0000000000003 × 10¹³—hooray!
Now numbers that shrink can be tricky too,
Like 0.0000000452.
We do just the same—but now to the right!
Until we find something that isn’t so slight.
We get 4.52 and that’s pretty keen,
But this time our 10 gets a minus 13.
So: 4.52 × 10⁻¹³,
A tiny old number, but crisp and clean!
So whether it’s huge or whether it’s small,
Scientific notation will handle it all.
Just move that ol’ dot, then raise up your 10,
And math will feel funny and clever again!