In a given year, about 1.52 × 10¹⁰ 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.

Answer 1

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

Total cost = Number of mail pieces × Cost of each stamp

Total cost = (1.52 × 10¹⁰) × $0.55

Calculating the product:

Total cost = 1.52 × 10¹⁰ × 0.55
= 8.36 × 10⁹

The total cost to deliver all the pieces of mail is $8.36 × 10⁹.