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Thread ID: 142110 2016-04-28 07:24:00 A mathematical conundrum.................. Billy T (70) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1419686 2016-04-28 07:24:00 Hi Team

I am using a dedicated website calculator to convert a particular magnetic field value to and from different magnetic parameters.

I am temporarily stumped by values such as 5.262e-4 and 5.262e-8, or 5262e+4 but my best guess is that they refer to the number of zeros that should follow, but then the option of plus or minus signs sent me back to the starting line!!!

Can anybody clarify this for me please?

Cheers

Billy 8-{) :confused:
Billy T (70)
1419687 2016-04-28 07:32:00 Scientific notation. Essentially, positive numbers mean shift the decimal point that many places to the right, and negative numbers mean shift the decimal point to the left. ;)

Or, technically speaking, it's short for 5.262 x 10^-4 :nerd:
pcuser42 (130)
1419688 2016-04-28 09:19:00 Scientific notation. Essentially, positive numbers mean shift the decimal point that many places to the right, and negative numbers mean shift the decimal point to the left. ;)

Or, technically speaking, it's short for 5.262 x 10^-4 :nerd:


So that would be 0.00005262 then?? For sure this value cannot go any other way.

Cheers

Billy 8-{)
Billy T (70)
1419689 2016-04-28 09:33:00 So that would be 0.00005262 then?

No, that has too many zeros. It should be 0.0005262

It's not a matter of adding zeros, it's a matter of how many times the decimal point get shifted

So 5 x 10^-1 would be .5

And 5 x 10^1 would be 50
BBCmicro (15761)
1419690 2016-04-28 22:42:00 www.mathsisfun.com 1101 (13337)
1419691 2016-04-29 01:09:00 Maths is fun??? Who are they kidding. Richard (739)
1419692 2016-04-29 02:33:00 Maths is fun??? Who are they kidding.I quite liked maths in high school ;) pcuser42 (130)
1419693 2016-04-29 02:51:00 I quite liked maths in high school ;)

Man I wish I had enjoyed it or that someone had been able to give me some real life examples that I could apply it to that made sense to me.
Webdevguy (17166)
1419694 2016-04-29 03:35:00 some real life examples that I could apply it to

My father had 50m of wire netting and wanted to make a temporary rectangular sheep pen against a straight fence. I used calculus to get the dimensions for the largest possible pen...
BBCmicro (15761)
1419695 2016-04-29 05:28:00 Man I wish I had enjoyed it or that someone had been able to give me some real life examples that I could apply it to that made sense to me.

I used Pythagoras to work out values to use for a CSS triangle just the other day :)
pcuser42 (130)
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