What is scientific notation and why is it important

Scientific notation is shorthand for writing really big or really small numbers. Without it we could not do certain calculations because there would be just too many digits and it would be tedious.

For example:

writing out the numbers in standard form ...

1,440,000,000 : 0.0000012 = ?

= 1,200,000,000,000,000

Scientific notation ...

144*10^7 : 12*10^-7 = 12*10^14

Scientific notation, is a way of writing numbers that accommodates values that's too large or too small to be conveniently written or comprehended in standard decimal notation ... Scientific notation is important to modern society because it provides to people working with these numbers.