An average American household uses about 1.04×10^4 KWH (kilowatt hours) of electricity a year if a power station generate 2.496×10^10 KWH per year how many household can I serve write your answer in scientific notation expressed to the exact decimal place

Answer 1

To determine how many average American households can be served by a power station generating \(2.496 \times 10^{10}\) kWh per year, we need to divide the total electricity generated by the average electricity usage per household.

The average household uses \(1.04 \times 10^{4}\) kWh per year.

Now, we perform the division:

\[ \text{Number of households} = \frac{2.496 \times 10^{10} \text{ kWh}}{1.04 \times 10^{4} \text{ kWh}} \]

To divide the numbers in scientific notation:

1. Divide the coefficients: \[ \frac{2.496}{1.04} \approx 2.3976923077 \]

2. Subtract the exponents: \[ 10^{10 - 4} = 10^{6} \]

Now, combine the results: \[ 2.3976923077 \times 10^{6} \]

For clarity and to express it in scientific notation with three decimal places: \[ 2.398 \times 10^{6} \]

Thus, the number of households that can be served is approximately:

\[ \boxed{2.398 \times 10^{6}} \]