Math Skills - Scientific Notation Scientific notation is the way that scientists easily handle very large numbers or very small numbers. For example, instead of writing 0.0000000056, we write 5.6 x 10^-9. So, how does this work? We can think of 5.6 x 10^-9 as the product of two numbers: 5.6 (the digit term) and 10^-9 (the exponential term). Here are some examples of scientific notation. By pdboyerin Public bookmarkswith exponentialnotationscientific_notationby 2 users