John Muir was an American naturalist born in Scotland on April 21, 1838. As one of the first advocates of the United States’ wilderness preservation, Muir spent his career writing letters, essays and books about many of his experiences in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, located in northern California. Muir’s influence on the history of American wilderness continues to live on past his death (in the early twentieth century) as people of all ages visit and hike through the 221 miles of the John Muir Trail, named in Muir’s honor. The trail begins in Yosemite National Park and concludes at Mount

Question

The following table compares Mount Whitney’s height, in feet, to other monumental peaks of the world.

Mountain Location Height (in feet) of Highest Peak
Mount Whitney California, United States 14,497 feet
Mount Fuji Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, Japan 12,388 feet
Mount Everest Great Himalayas of southern Asia 29,035 feet
Mount Kilimanjaro Tanzania, Africa 19,340 feet
Mount Olympus Mytikas, Greece 9,577 feet
The height of each peak is expressed in the standard form of a number. Express the height of Kilimanjaro in scientific notation.

1.934 x 10 4
1.934 x 10 5
19.34 x 10 5
19.34 x 10 4

Answer 1

To express the height of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is 19,340 feet, in scientific notation, we need to write it in the form \( a \times 10^n \), where \( 1 \leq a < 10 \) and \( n \) is an integer.

19,340 can be rewritten as 1.9340 x 10^4.

Here’s how it breaks down:

• Move the decimal point 4 places to the left to get 1.934, establishing that \( n = 4 \).

Thus, the correct scientific notation for the height of Mount Kilimanjaro is 1.934 x 10^4.

The other options are not correctly represented in standard scientific notation, so the answer is:

1.934 x 10^4.