To express the number 0.000032 in scientific notation, we first need to identify a way to write it in the form \( a \times 10^n \), where \( 1 \leq a < 10 \) and \( n \) is an integer.
- We can rewrite 0.000032 as \( 3.2 \times 10^{-5} \).
Here, \( 3.2 \) is between 1 and 10, and we moved the decimal point 5 places to the right to convert it to standard form, which gives us the \(-5\) exponent.
Thus, in scientific notation, \( 0.000032 \) can be written as:
\[ 3.2 \times 10^{-5} \]