Question

A pain-relieving pill has a mass of 0.005 g. Express the pill’s mass in grams using scientific notation or in milligrams.

Answer 1

Answer:- $5*10^-^3$ g or 5 mg.

Solution:- The given mass is 0.005 g. To express this in scientific notations we need to move the decimal three places to the right as in scientific notations the decimal should be placed right to the first non zero digit. Since there is only one non zero digit in the given number, the decimal is moved three places to the right and when the decimal is moved to the right then exponent is negative.

As, the decimal is moved three places to the right, the exponent is $10^-^3$ and the number becomes $5*10^-^3$ g.

Now, if we want to report 0.005 grams to milligrams then we need to use the conversion factor for this which is, 1 g = 1000 mg.

So, we need to multiply the given grams by 1000 to convert it to mg.

$0.005g(\frac{1000mg}{1g})$

= 5 mg

So, 0.005 grams in scientific notations is written as $5*10^-^3$ g and in milligrams it will be 5 mg.