Question

Question
In a given year, about 1.52×10^10
pieces of first-class mail are delivered in the U.S. If each piece of mail carries a stamp costing $0.55, what is the total cost in dollars to deliver all the pieces? Write the answer in scientific notation, expressed to the exact decimal place.(1 point)

Answer 1

To find the total cost of delivering the pieces of mail, we need to multiply the number of pieces of mail by the cost of each stamp.

Given:
- Number of pieces of mail = \( 1.52 \times 10^{10} \)
- Cost of each stamp = \( 0.55 \) dollars

Now, we calculate the total cost:

\[
\text{Total Cost} = \text{Number of Pieces} \times \text{Cost per Stamp}
\]
\[
\text{Total Cost} = 1.52 \times 10^{10} \times 0.55
\]

First, multiply the coefficients:

\[
1.52 \times 0.55 = 0.836
\]

Next, we keep the power of ten from the original term:

\[
\text{Total Cost} = 0.836 \times 10^{10}
\]

To express this in scientific notation, we need to adjust it to have a coefficient between 1 and 10. We can do this by moving the decimal point one place to the right, which increases the exponent by 1:

\[
0.836 \times 10^{10} = 8.36 \times 10^{9}
\]

Thus, the total cost in scientific notation is:

\[
\boxed{8.36 \times 10^{9}}
\]