Significant Figures

In experimental sciences, every physical measurement carries an inherent level of uncertainty defined by instrument precision. Reporting excess digits misrepresents experimental certainty, while omitting digits discards valuable data.

The tool parses your input string according to standard laboratory rules: non-zero digits are always significant, captive zeros are significant, leading zeros are not, and trailing zeros in decimals indicate intentional precision. It provides the exact count and rounded output with correct scientific notation when trailing zeros might otherwise be ambiguous.

The parser evaluates leading zeros, decimal points, and captive/trailing digits. For rounding, it converts the value to normalized scientific form, rounds the mantissa to (n - 1) decimal places using round-half-to-even logic, and reconstructs the string representation.