Scientific notation

Scientific notation (also referred to as standard form or standard index form) is a way of expressing numbers that are too big or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form. It is commonly used by scientists, mathematicians and engineers. On scientific calculators it is known as "SCI" display mode.

In scientific notation all numbers are written in the form

(m times ten raised to the power of n), where the exponent n is an integer, and the coefficient m is any real number (however, see normalized notation below), called the significand or mantissa. The term "mantissa" may cause confusion, however, because it can also refer to the fractional part of the common logarithm. If the number is negative then a minus sign precedes m (as in ordinary decimal notation).

Decimal floating point is a computer arithmetic system closely related to scientific notation.

Normalized notation

Any given integer can be written in the form m×10^ⁿ in many ways: for example, 350 can be written as 7002350000000000000♠3.5×10² or 7002350000000000000♠35×10¹ or 7002350000000000000♠350×10⁰.