Scientific Notation

Posted on March 17, 2022 by James Glassey

	Prefixes	Symbol	Scientific Notation	E notation *	Order of Magnitude
0.000000000001	pico	p	x10^-12	1E-12	-12
0.000000001	nano–	n	x10^-9	1E-9	-9
0.000001	micro–	µ	x10^-6	1E-6	-6
0.001	milli–	m	x10^-3	1E-3	-3
0.01	centi–	c	x10^-2	1E-2	-2
0.1	deci–	d	x10^-1	1E-1	-1
1	—————-	—————-	—————-	—————-	—————-
10	deka–	da	x10¹	1E1	1
100	hecto–	h	x10²	1E2	2
1’000	kilo–	k	x10³	1E3	3
1’000’000	mega–	M	x10⁶	1E6	6
100’000’000	giga–	G	x10⁹	1E9	9
1’000’000’000’000	tera–	T	x10¹²	1E12	12
1’000’000’000’000’000	peta–	P	x10¹⁵	1E15	15

* The ‘E’ in E notation does not represent the exponential or the constant ‘e’; it is a placeholder for ‘times 10 to the power of…’. To avoid possible confusion, ‘E’ is uppercased.

Further Information

For E notation, it is common to see numerical representations, for example, 2.34000E+3, this is the equlivalent to 2.34×10³

James Glassey

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