Power of 10

In decimal notation the nth power of ten is written as '1' followed by n zeroes. It can also be written as 10ⁿ or as 1En in E notation. See order of magnitude and orders of magnitude (numbers) for named powers of ten. There are two conventions for naming positive powers of ten, beginning with 10⁹, called the long and short scales. Where a power of ten has different names in the two conventions, the long scale name is shown in parentheses.

The positive 10 power related to a short scale name can be determined based on its Latin name-prefix using the following formula: 10^{[(prefix-number + 1) × 3]}

Examples:

billion = 10[(2 + 1) × 3] = 109 octillion = 10[(8 + 1) × 3] = 1027

Thus, shown in long form, a power of 10 is the number 1 followed by n zeros, where n is the exponent and is greater than 0; for example, 10⁶ is written 1,000,000. When n is less than 0, the power of 10 is the number 1 n places after the decimal point; for example, 10⁻² is written 0.01