Question

The moon is about 240,000 miles from Earth. What is the distance written as a whole number multiplied by a power of ten?

Answer 1

The anwser is 24×10 tiny 4

Answer 2

The answer is 24 * 10^4

Since we’re asked for a whole number, we count the number of zeros after the first nonzero numbers. In this case, our first non-zero numbers are 2 and 4 (24). The number of zeros after these numbers  are four (4). The number of zeros indicates the power number of 10.

Had we been asked for a decimal number   and a power of 10, then the answer  would have been 2.4 * 10^5