To find out how many horses weigh as much as one cruise ship, we can divide the weight of the cruise ship by the weight of one horse.
- The weight of the cruise ship is \( 3.83 \times 10^7 \) kg.
- The weight of one horse is \( 7.1 \times 10^2 \) kg.
Now, we calculate the number of horses equivalent to the weight of the cruise ship:
\[ \text{Number of horses} = \frac{3.83 \times 10^7}{7.1 \times 10^2} \]
To perform the division, we can separate the coefficients from the powers of ten:
\[ \frac{3.83}{7.1} \times \frac{10^7}{10^2} = \frac{3.83}{7.1} \times 10^{7 - 2} = \frac{3.83}{7.1} \times 10^5 \]
Calculating \( \frac{3.83}{7.1} \):
\[ \frac{3.83}{7.1} \approx 0.539 \]
Now, substituting this back into our equation gives:
\[ 0.539 \times 10^5 \]
To express \( 0.539 \) in scientific notation, we can rewrite it as \( 5.39 \times 10^{-1} \). Therefore,
\[ 0.539 \times 10^5 = 5.39 \times 10^4 \]
Now, we want to write this as a single term in scientific notation. Hence,
\[ 5.39 \times 10^4 = 5.39 \text{ could be rounded to } 5 \text{ for whole numbers.} \]
So rounding \( 5.39 \) to the nearest whole number gives us \( 5 \).
Thus, the final answer is:
\[ \boxed{5 \times 10^4} \]
This means approximately 50,000 horses weigh as much as one cruise ship.