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 answer

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

Given:

  • Number of pieces of first-class mail = \( 1.52 \times 10^{10} \)
  • Cost of each stamp = $0.55

Now we calculate the total cost:

\[ \text{Total Cost} = \text{Number of Pieces} \times \text{Cost per Stamp} \]

\[ \text{Total Cost} = (1.52 \times 10^{10}) \times 0.55 \]

To perform the multiplication, we can multiply the coefficients (1.52 and 0.55) and then adjust for powers of 10:

\[ 1.52 \times 0.55 = 0.836 \]

Now, we include the power of 10:

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

To express this in scientific notation, we need to adjust the coefficient to be between 1 and 10. Thus, we rewrite \( 0.836 \) as \( 8.36 \times 10^{-1} \):

\[ 0.836 \times 10^{10} = 8.36 \times 10^{-1} \times 10^{10} = 8.36 \times 10^{9} \]

Therefore, the total cost in scientific notation is:

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