Rhode Island is the smallest state in the United States. Its land area is about 2.9 x 10^10 square feet. Alaska, the largest state, is about 5.5 x 10^

Maiclubk

Maiclubk

Answered question

2021-05-12

Rhode Island is the smallest state in the United States. Its land area is about 2.9×1010 square feet. Alaska, the largest state, is about 5.5×102 times as large as Rhode Island. What is the land are of Alaska in square feet?

Answer & Explanation

Bertha Stark

Bertha Stark

Skilled2021-05-13Added 96 answers

When multiplying two numbers in scientific notation, you should group the significands (the fancy word for the number in front of the power of ten) and the powers of ten. Hence
2.9×1010×5.5×102=(2.9×5.5)×(1010×102)=15.95×1010+2=15.95×1012
Then we need to make sure that the significand is between 11 and 1010 so we need to move the decimal place one place to the left. That will mean we should increase the power of ten by one. So we get.
=1.595×1013
At this point, we should look at how many significant figures our starting numbers had. They both had 2 in this case. So our result should too. So we need to round so that this number has only two digits.
=1.6×1013

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