At the end of fiscal year 2004, the federal debt of Country C is $278,560,125,000. What is the closest estimation of this amount? Express your answer in the form of a single digit times an integer power of 10.(1 point)

Question

Responses

3 × 1011
3 times 10 superscript 11 baseline

2.79 × 1011
2.79 times 10 superscript 11 baseline

2 × 1011
2 times 10 superscript 11 baseline

3 × 10−11
3 times 10 superscript negative 11 baseline
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Answer 1

To express the federal debt of Country C, which is $278,560,125,000, in scientific notation, we can follow these steps:

1. Identify the first significant digit, which is 2.
2. Count the number of places we need to move the decimal point to the right to express the number as a single digit. For $278,560,125,000, we move the decimal point 11 places to the left.

Thus, we write it as:

\[ 2.78560125 \times 10^{11} \]

However, we want the closest estimation. Rounding 2.78560125 gives us 2.79.

So the expression in scientific notation would be:

\[ 2.79 \times 10^{11} \]

Therefore, the closest estimation of this amount is:

2.79 × 10^11