Talk:Engineering notation

Some people express the speed of light as 3e8 m/s, but I hesitate to add that to the already rather turgid discussion on the main article. --Eric Forste 07:50, 21 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer to use engineering notation on my computer for the simple fact that SI prefixes match perfectly with it. For instance, a number like 9.65 4 C/mol (coulombs per mole) would be better written as 96.5 kC/mol. When I see the calculator display 96.5e3, I can better comprehend that number than 9.65e4. I'm not from Japan or China, after all, where they do traditionally go by sets of 4 digits. For instance, they would traditionally say that the speed of light is 3,0000,0000 meters per second. And as for that, that number is too large to comprehend whether it is displayed as .300 9 or as it is commonly, 3.00 8. The important element here is that the precision needs to be indicated, and it needs to be legible. Wherever engineering notation supports the precision part of it, it should be used, because it always is–to me–more legible. --D. F. Schmidt (talk) 09:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]