The display "1.7 8 E12" on Charlie's calculator represents a number in scientific notation. The "E" stands for "exponent," indicating that the number should be multiplied by 10 raised to the power of the number that follows it.
In this case, "1.7 8" should be interpreted correctly as "1.78," and "E12" means "× 10^12." Thus, "1.78 E12" can be expressed as:
\[ 1.78 \times 10^{12} \]
This means that the actual value represented by the display is:
\[ 1.78 \times 10^{12} = 1,780,000,000,000 \]
So, Charlie's calculator is showing her the product of the two large numbers as 1.78 trillion (or 1.78 followed by 12 zeros).
1 answer