To find the combined capacity of the two pools, we need to add the capacities of each pool together.
The capacities are:
- Olympic size pool: \( 8.12 \times 10^5 \) gallons
- Smaller pool: \( 5.27 \times 10^5 \) gallons
To add these, we can keep them in scientific notation:
\[ 8.12 \times 10^5 + 5.27 \times 10^5 = (8.12 + 5.27) \times 10^5 \]
Calculating the addition:
\[ 8.12 + 5.27 = 13.39 \]
So we have:
\[ 13.39 \times 10^5 \]
Now we need to express this in standard scientific notation, where the coefficient is between 1 and 10. We can convert \( 13.39 \times 10^5 \) to this format:
\[ 13.39 = 1.339 \times 10^1 \quad \text{(since \( 13.39 = 1.339 \times 10^1 \))} \]
This means:
\[ 13.39 \times 10^5 = 1.339 \times 10^{1+5} = 1.339 \times 10^6 \]
Therefore, the combined capacity of the pools is:
\[ 1.339 \times 10^6 \text{ gallons} \]
The correct answer is:
B \( 1.339 \times 10^6 \) gallons