Scientific notation

In mathematics, scientific notation, also known as scientific notation, is a convenient way to represent very small or very large numbers with brevity.

Scientific notation has the following general form: ::m \times 10^{n}::, where ::m:: is called the mantissa, ::10:: is called the base (decimal, i.e. base ::10::, being the most common one), and ::n:: is called the exponent. For example, suppose we have the very huge number ::155300000000000000::. Using scientific notation, this can tersely be expressed as ::1.553 \times 10^{17}::.