A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson [270]
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*1A word on scientific notation: Since very large numbers are cumbersome to write and nearly impossible to read, scientists use a shorthand involving powers (or multiples) of ten in which, for instance, 10,000,000,000 is written 1010 and 6,500,000 becomes 6.5 x 106. The principle is based very simply on multiples of ten 10 x 10 (or 100) becomes 102: 10 x 10 x 10 (or 1,000) is 103; and so on, obviously and indefinitely. The little superscript number signifies the number of zeroes following the larger principal number. Negative notations provide essentially a mirror image, with the superscript number indicating the number of spaces to the right of the decimal point (so 10-4 means 0.0001). Though I salute the principle, it remains an amazement to me that anyone seeing “1.4 x 109 km3” would see at once that that signifies 1.4 billion cubic kilometers,