Question

In a given year about 1.52*10 to the power of 10 pieces of first class mail are delivered in the us if each piece of mail carries a stamp coating $0.55 what is the total cost in dollars to deliver all the pieces write the answer in scientific notation

Answer 1

To find the total cost to deliver all the pieces of first-class mail, you multiply the number of pieces of mail by the cost of each stamp.

Given:
- Number of pieces of mail = \( 1.52 \times 10^{10} \)
- Cost of each stamp = $0.55

Now, let's perform the multiplication:

\[
\text{Total Cost} = (1.52 \times 10^{10}) \times 0.55
\]

First, calculate \( 1.52 \times 0.55 \):

\[
1.52 \times 0.55 = 0.836
\]

Now, since we have the power of ten from the first term, we write:

\[
\text{Total Cost} = 0.836 \times 10^{10}
\]

To express this in proper scientific notation, we want the coefficient to be between 1 and 10. Thus:

\[
0.836 = 8.36 \times 10^{-1}
\]

Now we can combine the powers of ten:

\[
0.836 \times 10^{10} = 8.36 \times 10^{-1} \times 10^{10} = 8.36 \times 10^{9}
\]

So, the total cost to deliver all the pieces of mail in scientific notation is:

\[
\boxed{8.36 \times 10^{9}}
\]