An online storage facility has 1.326 * 10¹³ bytes of storage available. It has 2.6 * 10⁴ customers. How many bytes of storage can each customer use? Write your answer in science notation, expressed to the exact decimal place.

1 answer

To find out how many bytes of storage each customer can use, we need to divide the total amount of storage by the number of customers:

\[ \text{Total Storage} = 1.326 \times 10^{13} \text{ bytes} \] \[ \text{Number of Customers} = 2.6 \times 10^{4} \]

Now we perform the division:

\[ \text{Storage per Customer} = \frac{1.326 \times 10^{13}}{2.6 \times 10^{4}} \]

We can simplify this by breaking it down:

  1. Divide the coefficients: \[ \frac{1.326}{2.6} \approx 0.510 \]

  2. Subtract the exponents (using \(\frac{10^a}{10^b} = 10^{a-b}\)): \[ 10^{13 - 4} = 10^{9} \]

Now combine the results:

\[ \text{Storage per Customer} \approx 0.510 \times 10^{9} \]

To express this in proper scientific notation, we need to adjust it:

\[ 0.510 \times 10^{9} = 5.10 \times 10^{8} \]

Thus, the amount of storage each customer can use is:

\[ \boxed{5.10 \times 10^{8}} \text{ bytes} \]