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# How to Divide Scientific Notation with different Exponents?

TopScientific Notations are those forms of a number which are written as product of two terms. The 1st term is just a real number as it can be a decimal number also, but there can be only one digit before the decimal which can be any digit from 1 – 9. The 2nd term is usually written as an exponent of 10. For example: 1012 or 10 -15. Thus we see that power or the exponent of 10 can be any positive or negative Integer number. Let us learn how to divide scientific notation with different exponents.

Result of division with exponent depends on the base of exponent. If the base of exponent is other than 10, then proper division operation has to be performed between the 1st term of the scientific notation and the exponent. But if the case is such that the exponent is having the base as 10, then we do not have to solve the 1st term as here power of 10 in scientific notation is subtracted from the power of denominator. In either of the cases, we would get a new scientific notation. Let us see some examples:

Example 1: Suppose we divide 4.25 x 104 by 109?

Solution: Subtract the powers of 10 without touching the 1st part of the scientific notation as:
4.25 x 104 /109 = 4.25 x 104 – 9 = 4.25 x 10-5?

Example 2: Suppose we divide 1.28 x 104 by 24?

Solution: Here we would have to solve the complete division as the exponent is having the base 2 and this time we cannot repeat the procedure we used in example 1. So, we do it as follows:
1.28 x 104 /24 = 1.28 x 104 /16 = 0.08 x 104 = 8 x 102.