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Write each of the following in scientific notation.

The federal debt at the close of business on Sept. 30, 2016: about $19{,}600{,}000{,}000{,}000$ dollars.

The world's population in 2016: about $7{,}418{,}000{,}000$ people.

Solution

To convert the federal debt to scientific notation, we will count the number of digits after the first non-zero digit (which happens to be a $1$ here). Since there are $13$ places after the first non-zero digit, we write:
$1\overbrace{9{,}600{,}000{,}000{,}000}^{13\text{ places}} \text{ dollars} = 1.96\times 10^{13} \text{ dollars}$

Since there are nine places after the first non-zero digit of $7\text{,}$ the world’s population in 2016 was about
$7{,}\overbrace{418{,}000{,}000}^{9\text{ places}} \text{ people} = 7.418 \times 10^{9} \text{ people}$

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