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 × 10^11

2 × 10^11

3 × 10^−11

2.79 × 10^11

Answer 1

To express the federal debt of Country C, which is $278,560,125,000, in scientific notation, we can first rewrite this number.

Starting with the number:

\[ 278,560,125,000 \]

We can place the decimal point after the first non-zero digit (2):

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

To round this to one digit in front of the decimal, we can round off after the first digit:

\[ 2.8 \]

Now, we express it as:

\[ 2.8 \times 10^{11} \]

However, the closest match among the provided options is:

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

Thus, the answer is:

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