Introduction
Do you know what the mass of earth is ? It is 5,970,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg!
Can you read this number?
Mass of Uranus is 86,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.
Which has greater mass, Earth or Uranus?
Distance between Sun and Saturn is 1,433,500,000,000 m
and distance between Saturn and Uranus is 1,439,000,000,000 m.
Can you read these numbers?
Which distance is less?
These very large numbers are difficult to read, understand and compare. To make these numbers easy to read, understand and compare, we use exponents.
Exponent: An exponent refers to the number of times a number is multiplied by itself.
Base: The base in an exponent expression is the number that is being repeatedly multiplied.
Power: In an expression with an exponent, the number that tells you how many times the base is multiplied by itself is called the power or exponent.
In this Chapter, we shall learn about exponents and also learn how to use them.