In a given year, about 1.52x10^10 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.

Answer 1

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

Number of pieces of mail = 1.52x10^10
Cost of each stamp = $0.55

Total cost = Number of pieces of mail × Cost of each stamp
= 1.52x10^10 × $0.55

To multiply these two numbers in scientific notation, we can simply multiply the two coefficients and add the exponents:

Total cost = 1.52 × 0.55 × 10^10
= 0.836 × 10^10

Therefore, the total cost to deliver all the pieces of mail is $0.836x10^10.