Adding and Subtracting Expressions in Scientific Notation

Example #1: Simplify the following and give your answer in scientific notation. First, stack the two terms making sure that the decimals are lined up. Note the exponent in your answer does not change when adding or subtracting.

Example #2: Simplify the following and give your answer in scientific notation. Note the first answer of 0.6  10 4 is not in scientific notation. The first number needs to be one or greater. So I multiplied the first number by ten which took one of the factors of ten away from the second number.

Remember that you can only add or subtract like-terms. So that means if the exponents in the scientific notation are different, you will need to change them. Example #3: Simplify the following and give your answer in scientific notation. It doesn’t matter which term you change. I chose the first term here.

Example #4: Simplify the following and give your answer in scientific notation.

Example #5 The satellite travelled 8,400,000,000 miles during the first six months of its orbits and 480,000,000 miles during the second six months. How far did the satellite travel that first year? (First convert the numbers into scientific notation, then write an expression that shows the operation used to find the answer, and lastly give your answer in scientific notation.) The satellite travelled 8.88  10 9 miles the first year.