Scientific Notation Converter & Calculator

Scientific notation expresses numbers as a coefficient between 1 and 10 multiplied by a power of 10. For example, 299,792,458 becomes 2.998 × 10⁸, and 0.000000001 becomes 1 × 10⁻⁹. This makes it much easier to work with very large numbers (like distances in astronomy) and very small numbers (like particle masses in physics). The format is always: a × 10ⁿ, where 1 ≤ a < 10 and n is an integer.

Both express numbers as a coefficient times a power of 10, but engineering notation restricts the exponent to multiples of 3 (…, -6, -3, 0, 3, 6, 9, …). This aligns with SI metric prefixes: 10³ = kilo, 10⁶ = mega, 10⁹ = giga, 10⁻³ = milli, 10⁻⁶ = micro. For example, 0.00456 is 4.56 × 10⁻³ in scientific notation and 4.56 × 10⁻³ in engineering notation (same here), but 45,600 is 4.56 × 10⁴ in scientific notation and 45.6 × 10³ in engineering notation.

E-notation is a computer-friendly way to write scientific notation, commonly used in programming languages, calculators, and spreadsheets. Instead of writing 3.0 × 10⁸, you write 3.0e8 (or 3.0E8). The 'e' stands for 'exponent' and means 'times 10 to the power of.' So 1.5e-3 means 1.5 × 10⁻³ = 0.0015. Most programming languages (JavaScript, Python, C, Java) accept E-notation as valid number literals.

Significant figures (sig figs) are the meaningful digits in a number that contribute to its precision. In scientific notation, the coefficient shows exactly how many significant figures a measurement has. For example, 2.998 × 10⁸ has 4 significant figures, while 3.0 × 10⁸ has 2 significant figures — the trailing zero after the decimal is significant. Rules: all non-zero digits are significant, zeros between non-zero digits are significant, trailing zeros after the decimal point are significant, leading zeros are never significant.