How to use Scientific Notation on the TI 84 Plus Calculator

hello and welcome to hd calcs i'm rick and in this video we're going to have look at how we can use scientific notation on the ti 84 plus texas instruments graphing calculator to do this we'll be using the second function key that looks like this located here the comma key with the second function of ee that looks like this located here the mode key that looks like this located here and the negative key that looks like this located down here at the bottom if we're given number that we want to enter in scientific notation like for example let's say 150 000 which in scientific notation is five times ten to the power of five we can do it like this we start by entering the 1.5 onto our screen and then we use second and then the comma key with the second function up we'll see appear on our screen here and that represents the times 10 of this scientific notation then we just enter the exponent which in this example is 5 and press enter and we see we've entered 150 000. so if we're given say 1.5 times 10 to the power of 5 and want to determine what that is out of scientific notation we can enter that on our calculator and press enter this also works for small numbers if we're given something like 1 times 10 to the power of negative 3 we can enter it like this first the 1 then the second function comma there's that remember that represents the times 10 and then we want to use the negative to indicate the negative 3 here note that's different from the minus key we want this key down here with the negative in brackets and the three so this is equal to one times ten to the power of negative three press enter and we see we get our result zero point zero zero one which is correct now this is good for entering numbers on an individual basis but if we are given number like say this in normal notation and want to convert that into scientific notation well to do that we need to change our calculator to scientific notation mode so to do that we press the mode key and at the very top here we'll see three options normal psi and eng these represent normal mode scientific notation mode and engineering mode typically your calculator will be on normal mode but what we want to do is scroll one to the right so that sci is highlighted and press enter this should now be flashing and if we press clear now we can enter our numbers in normal mode and convert them to scientific notation so if we enter 150 000 and press enter we see this converts it to 1.5 which is times 10 to the power of 5. also with small numbers 0.001 changes to 1 times 10 to the power of negative 3. and when we're done with this and want to make sure we're back in our normal mode it's good idea to go into the mode highlight normal again press enter so that's back in normal mode and clear just so we don't trip ourselves up in the future now if we enter say 150 000 it doesn't convert it for us all right hope this helps and good luck on those tests out there everybody