Why It Matters: Exponents
![Artist's concept of Voyager in flight.](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/121/2016/06/01183303/Voyager_spacecraft.jpg)
- The distance to the open cluster Pleiades is [latex]130[/latex] parsecs from Earth. That's [latex]{1.7}\times{10}^{15}[/latex] miles.
- The center of the Milky Way is more than [latex]8[/latex] kiloparsecs (a kiloparsec is [latex]1000[/latex] parsecs) from Earth, and the Milky Way is roughly [latex]34[/latex] kiloparsecs across.
- The nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is about [latex]1.3[/latex] parsecs from the sun.
- Most of the stars visible to the unaided eye in the nighttime sky are within [latex]500[/latex] parsecs of the sun.
Learning Outcomes
- Apply exponent rules to simplify expressions with integer exponents
- Write very large and very small numbers in scientific notation
- Apply exponent rules to numbers written in scientific notation in applications
Licenses & Attributions
CC licensed content, Original
- Why it Matters: Exponents. Provided by: Lumen Learning License: CC BY: Attribution.
CC licensed content, Shared previously
- Voyager Spacecraft. Provided by: NASA License: CC BY: Attribution.