Why do scientists use scientific notation to represent very small and large numbers?

Scientific notation writes a very large or very small number as a number between 1 and 10 multiplied by a power of 10. This makes the number shorter and easier to read and work with—for example, 0.0000042 becomes 4.2 × 10⁻⁶. So the reason is to simplify the number by using fewer digits, not to change its accuracy or precision.

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