Question

The amounts of paper waste generated in a region during two years were 41,300,000 tons and 50,500,000 tons. What was the total paper waste generated over these two years in the region, expressed in scientific notation?

Answer 1

first step is to add the two numbers

41,300,000 + 50,500,000 = 91800000

second step is to convert the # to scientific notation. recall that scientific notation takes the form
a * 10^(b)
where (a) is number at least 1, but less than 10, and b is a positive or negative integer exponent

since we want the (a) part to be at least 1 but less than 10, let's use 9.18 since your number starts with 918

your number is 91,800,000

now, count the number of decimal places from the end of the number, to 9, like so:



that number becomes your exponent