Scientific Notation Converter
Move between standard numbers and scientific or E notation, in whichever direction you need.
Result
1.496 × 10⁸
E notation: 1.496e8
How it works
Scientific notation writes a number as a value between 1 and 10 times a power of ten. The distance to the sun, 149,600,000 km, becomes 1.496 × 10⁸. The exponent just counts how many places the decimal point moved.
Going the other way, a positive exponent shifts the point right and a negative one shifts it left. So 1.496e8 expands back to 149,600,000, while 3.2e-4 opens up to 0.00032.
Pick your direction and type. E notation like 1.496e8 is the plain-text form you'll see in calculators and code, and it's accepted here too. Very large or very small results stay in E notation so they don't sprawl across the screen.
Frequently asked questions
What does the 'e' in 1.496e8 mean?
The e stands for 'times ten to the power of.' So 1.496e8 reads as 1.496 × 10⁸, and 5e-3 is 5 × 10⁻³, which equals 0.005. It's just a keyboard-friendly way to write scientific notation.
How do negative exponents work?
A negative exponent means the number is smaller than one. Each step down moves the decimal point one place to the left, so 6.02e-2 becomes 0.0602. This is how tiny quantities get written compactly.
Why is my answer still shown with an 'e'?
When a value is astronomically large or vanishingly small, spelling it out in full would run off the page. In those cases the standard form is kept in E notation, which stays readable and exact.