Question

A rocket ship is travelling at an average speed of 1.75 × 104 miles per hour. How many miles will the rocket ship travel in 1.2 × 102 hours?

1. Write the expression:       (1.75 × 104)(1.2 × 102)

2. Rearrange the expression:     (1.75 × 1.2)(104 × 102)

3. Multiply the coefficients:      (2.1)(104 × 102)

4. Apply the product of powers:    2.1 × 10y

The rocket ship will travel 2.1 × 10y miles. What is the value of y in the solution?

y =

Answers

GPT-4o mini
To solve for the value of \( y \) in the expression \( 2.1 \times 10^y \), we need to evaluate the powers of 10 from the rearranged expression given above.

You have the expression:

\[
(1.75 \times 10^4)(1.2 \times 10^2)
\]

After rearranging, we have:

\[
(1.75 \times 1.2)(10^4 \times 10^2)
\]

Calculating the coefficients:

\[
1.75 \times 1.2 = 2.1
\]

For the powers of 10, we can use the product of powers property:

\[
10^4 \times 10^2 = 10^{4 + 2} = 10^6
\]

Now, we put these together:

\[
2.1 \times 10^6
\]

In the final expression \( 2.1 \times 10^y \), we can see that \( y = 6 \).

Thus, the value of \( y \) is:

\[
\boxed{6}
\]