Scientific Notation Converter

Scientific notation writes a number as a coefficient from 1 up to (but not including) 10, multiplied by a power of ten: 1,500,000 = 1.5 × 10⁶ and 0.000032 = 3.2 × 10⁻⁵. It keeps very large and very small numbers short and easy to compare.

Move the decimal point until exactly one non-zero digit is in front of it. The number of places you moved it is the exponent: positive if you moved it to the left, negative if you moved it to the right. 45,000 → 4.5 × 10⁴ and 0.0072 → 7.2 × 10⁻³.

E notation is how calculators and programming languages write scientific notation: 1.5E+6 means 1.5 × 10⁶ and 3.2E-5 means 3.2 × 10⁻⁵. It always uses a point as the decimal separator.

Engineering notation is like scientific notation, but the exponent is always a multiple of 3, so it matches the SI prefixes: 3.2 × 10⁻⁵ becomes 32 × 10⁻⁶ (micro, µ) and 47,000 becomes 47 × 10³ (kilo, k).

Move the decimal point by the exponent: to the right for a positive exponent, to the left for a negative one, filling in zeros as needed. 6.02 × 10²³ is 602 followed by 21 zeros, and 3.2 × 10⁻⁵ is 0.000032.