To find the total cost of delivering all the first-class mail, you can 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, calculate the total cost:
\[ \text{Total cost} = \text{Number of pieces of mail} \times \text{Cost of each stamp} \]
\[ \text{Total cost} = (1.52 \times 10^{10}) \times 0.55 \]
To perform the multiplication:
- Multiply the coefficients: \[ 1.52 \times 0.55 = 0.836 \]
- Since the exponential part remains the same, we keep \( 10^{10} \).
Your total is now: \[ 0.836 \times 10^{10} \]
Next, convert \( 0.836 \) to scientific notation. To do so, we can express it as \( 8.36 \times 10^{-1} \).
Thus, the equation becomes: \[ 0.836 \times 10^{10} = 8.36 \times 10^{-1} \times 10^{10} = 8.36 \times 10^{9} \]
So, the total cost in scientific notation is:
\[ \boxed{8.36 \times 10^{9}} \] dollars.