In a given year, about 1.52×10^10

Question

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 point)

Answer 1

To find the total cost of delivering the mail, you multiply the number of pieces of mail by the cost of each stamp:

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

Substituting the values provided:

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

Now, calculate \(1.52 \times 0.55\):

\[ 1.52 \times 0.55 = 0.836 \]

Next, we have to incorporate the \(10^{10}\) into the result:

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

To express this in proper scientific notation, we need to convert \(0.836\) into a number between 1 and 10. This is done by moving the decimal point one place to the right (which increases the exponent by one):

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

Now we can combine this with \(10^{10}\):

\[ \text{Total Cost} = 8.36 \times 10^{-1} \times 10^{10} = 8.36 \times 10^{9} \]

Thus, the total cost in scientific notation is:

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