Softonic

Scientific Notation Converter

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Very large and very small numbers are miserable to read in full: 0.0000000000667 is roughly the gravitational constant, and typing zeros is not a career. Scientific notation collapses them into a mantissa times a power of ten. This converter works in either direction: standard decimal to scientific notation, or scientific notation back to a plain decimal. The scientific form is written in E-notation, for example 6.674e-11.

How to convert notation

  1. 1

    Pick the direction

    Standard to scientific, or scientific back to standard decimal.

  2. 2

    Enter the value

    Accepts a plain decimal (0.000042) or E-notation (4.2e-5). Both upper and lower case E work.

  3. 3

    Set the precision

    For standard to scientific, choose how many digits the mantissa keeps after the point, typically 3 to 6.

  4. 4

    Copy the result

    You get E-notation (4.2e-5) one way and a plain decimal the other. One click copies it.

Standard, scientific and engineering notation

They look similar, but each notation has a different rule for the exponent. This converter reads and writes the first two; engineering notation is shown here for reference.

The three forms

Form Rule for the exponent 299,792,458 m/s (speed of light)
Standard No exponent 299,792,458
Scientific Exponent any integer; mantissa 1-10 2.99792458e8
Engineering Exponent a multiple of 3 299.792458e6

Engineering notation lines up with SI prefixes: 10^-9 is nano, 10^-6 is micro, 10^3 is kilo, 10^9 is giga, which is why electrical engineers and chemists prefer it.

Physical constants in scientific notation

Constant Value
Planck constant (h) 6.62607015e-34
Gravitational constant (G) 6.67430e-11
Avogadro’s number (N_A) 6.02214076e23
Electron mass 9.1093837e-31
Speed of light in vacuum (c) 2.99792458e8
Elementary charge (e) 1.602176634e-19

What the converter accepts

  • 6.02e23 (E-notation, most compact)
  • 6.02E23 (uppercase variant, read the same)
  • 602000000000000000000000 (plain decimal, converted to scientific)
  • 0.000042 (small decimals become negative exponents)

Tips

  • Significant figures follow the mantissa. 2.5e3 has 2 significant figures; 2.500e3 has 4.
  • Negative exponents mean fractional values. 1e-3 = 0.001.
  • Precision controls the mantissa. A precision of 6 keeps six digits after the decimal point, so 1234567 becomes 1.234567e+6.

Frequently Asked Questions

They mean the same number: 4.2e-5 and 4.2 times ten to the power minus five are identical. E-notation is the computer-friendly form used in code and calculators, and it is the form this converter outputs.

Set the precision field to the number of digits you want after the decimal point in the mantissa. It applies when converting standard to scientific, and the exponent adjusts automatically.

Classic floating-point quirk: 0.1 and 0.2 do not have exact binary representations, so the result drifts a tiny bit. Lower the precision and it rounds back cleanly.

No. Conversion runs on the page and the values you enter never leave your device.

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