Scientific notation converter
Convert a number into scientific notation, engineering notation or calculator E-notation, and back again.
That's 1.23× as big as a million, while a billion is 810× bigger. That number has 7 digits before the decimal point.
What it means
How big is that?
Very large and very small numbers are held to about 16 significant digits, which is all a computer can store exactly.
Every unit
Your number in every form
Learn
Three things worth knowing
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Count the places you move the point
Moving the decimal point left raises the exponent, moving it right lowers it. 1,234,000 → 1.234 with the point moved six places left, so × 10⁶.
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Archimedes started it
In The Sand Reckoner he built a system for writing numbers bigger than anyone had names for, to count the grains of sand that would fill the universe.
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E is not Euler’s number
6.022e23 on a calculator means 6.022 × 10²³, not anything to do with e = 2.718. It is just a keyboard-friendly way to type the exponent.
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Background
About scientific notation
Scientific notation writes any number as one digit, a decimal point and a power of ten: 1,234,000 = 1.234 × 10⁶. It makes huge and tiny numbers comparable at a glance, and makes the significant digits explicit.
Engineering notation restricts the exponent to multiples of three, so it lines up with kilo, mega, milli and micro.