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Uppercase “E” stands for “exponent” in calculator displays. Calculator manufacturers use it to display numbers in scientific notation because the longhand version is difficult to display and would be even more difficult to read. To complicate matters, some calculator manufacturers use lowercase “e” to denote exponents, inviting confusion between scientific notation and Euler’s number, which is a different thing altogether. Don’t be taken in. If either an uppercase or lowercase letter “e” appears on your display output, it denotes an exponent. The only place you’ll see Euler’s number is on the keypad or as a constant that you type in.
What Is Scientific Notation?
Science is full of very large numbers and very small numbers that are difficult to read and write. For example, the mass of the earth is 5,970,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms, while the mass of a hydrogen atom is 0.00000000000000000000000000167 kilograms. Scientific notation makes these numbers easier to handle by expressing the 0’s as a power of ten. This helps to condense many decimal places or multiple orders of magnitude into a smaller mathematical expression that is easier to read.
Using this notation, the mass of the Earth becomes 5.97 × 1024 kg, and the mass of a hydrogen atom becomes 1.67 × 10-27 kg. Instead of numbers with long strings of zeros that are difficult to count and even more difficult to display on a small screen, you have more manageable decimal fractions and exponents of 10.
Scientific notation works by reducing down the number to only have one number less than 10 in front of the decimal point. We do this by dividing by a certain magnitude of 10. In scientific notation, the exponent of the multiplying factor (10) will almost always be a whole number.
Entering Scientific Notation on the Keypad
It’s just as difficult to punch in long strings of zeros on a calculator pad as it is to write them on paper, so calculators have a shortcut. It’s the EE key. To enter a number in scientific notation, first input the argument, then press the EE key and enter the exponent. For example, to enter the mass of the earth, key in 5.97, then press the EE key and enter 24. The display will read 5.97E24 (or 5.97e24). Note that the number will appear with all its zeroes if they fit on the screen. For example, if you key in 1.2 EE 5, the display will show 120,000.
