Calculator and E+ meaning

Calculators and e+ The e stands for Exponent, which means the number of tens you multiply a number by. For example, if I square 123456789, I get 1.524157875019e+16, which means that the answer is 1.524157875019 times 10 raised to the sixteenth power (that is, multiplied by 10 sixteen times). To write it as a regular number, you can just move the decimal point to the right sixteen places, since multiplying by ten moves the decimal point one place to the right: 1.524157875019e+16 = 15,241,578,750,190,000 That's over 15 quadrillion. You can also have a negative exponent, which means you have to move the decimal point to the left. For example, if I divide 1 by 123456789, I get: 8.10000007371e-9 = 0.00000000810000007371 In both cases, you can see that the reason for using the "e" notation is to be able to show a number that would have too many digits to display if they wrote it all out. If you are interested in more about this, you might do a search in the Dr. Math archives for the words scientific notation . - Doctor Peterson, The Math Forum