An average American household uses about 1.04 x 10⁴ kWh (kilowatt hours) of electricity a year. If a power station generates 2.496 x 1010 kWh per year, how many households can it serve? Write your answer in scientific notation, expressed to the exact decimal place. (1 point)

Answer 1

To find out how many households a power station can serve, we need to divide the total electricity generated by the power station by the average electricity used by a household.

Total electricity generated by the power station: \( 2.496 \times 10^{10} \) kWh

Average electricity used by a household: \( 1.04 \times 10^{4} \) kWh

Now we can perform the calculation:

\[ \text{Number of households} = \frac{2.496 \times 10^{10}}{1.04 \times 10^{4}} \]

First, perform the division of the coefficients (2.496 and 1.04):

\[ \frac{2.496}{1.04} = 2.4 \]

Now, for the powers of ten, when dividing, we subtract the exponents:

\[ 10^{10} / 10^{4} = 10^{10-4} = 10^{6} \]

Putting it all together:

\[ \text{Number of households} = 2.4 \times 10^{6} \]

Thus, the power station can serve \( \boxed{2.4 \times 10^{6}} \) households.