Name:________________________
Solve each.
1. The area of land that Rhode Island covers is approximately 1.5 x 103 square miles. The area of
land that Alaska covers is 6.45 x 105 square miles. About how many more times larger is Alaska
than Rhode Island?
2. An ant is 3.5 x 10-3 m long. What is the length of two of these ants, placed end to end?
1)
2)
3)
4)
3.5 x 10-6 m
1.75 x 10-3 m
7 x 10-3 m
7 x 10-6 m
3. Light travels through space at a constant speed of about 3 x 10 5 km/second. Sunlight reflecting
from the moon takes about 1.28 seconds to reach Earth. Find the distance from the moon to the
Earth, and express your answer in scientific notation.
4. The population of a country in 1950 was 6.2 x 107. The population of this country in 2030 is
projected to be 300 times larger than it was in 1950. If this projection is correct, what will the
population of this country be in 2030?
5. The world population in 2025 may reach 7.83 x 109 people. This is about triple what the world
population was in 1950.
a. PART A: What was the world population in 1950, expressed in scientific notation?
b. PART B: What was the world population in 1950, expressed in billions of people?
THE ANSWERS
1. About 430 times larger (4.3 x 102)
2. (3)
3. 3.84 x 105 km
4. 1.86 x 1010 people
5. PART A: 2.61 x 109 people
PART B: 2.6 billion people