Scientific Notation

In physics, chemistry, and astronomical modeling, values range from the mass of an electron (9.1 × 10⁻³¹ kg) to the mass of the Sun (1.989 × 10³⁰ kg). Expressing these numbers with trailing or leading zeros is tedious and prone to transcription errors.

This tool instantly decomposes any positive or negative real number into its normalized mantissa (where 1 ≤ |m| < 10) and integer power of ten. It also generates engineering notation (where the exponent is a multiple of three) and standard E-notation used in programming languages.

The number's base-10 logarithm determines the characteristic exponent n = floor(log10(|x|)). The mantissa is then evaluated as m = x / 10ⁿ. Special checks handle zero, negative inputs, and subnormal floating-point quantities.