Answer:
The total distance from the sun is 5.804*10⁸ miles.
Step-by-step explanation:
The distance from the sun to earth is 9.24*10⁷ miles in the distance from earth to Jupiter is 4.88*10⁸ miles.
To calculate the total distance from the sun you must do the sum between the distance from the sun to earth and the distance from earth to Jupiter:
9.24*10⁷ miles + 4.88*10⁸ miles
These numbers are in scientific notation. To add numbers in scientific notation, they must have the same exponent in the power of 10. When the numbers to be added do not have the same power of base 10, then the numbers must be converted so that they remain with the same exponent.
In this case, you express the second term, 4.88 * 10⁸, as a power of 10⁷. The way to transform this power of 10 is as follows: to decrease the value of the power, the decimal point is moved to the right as many times as desired. In this case, since you want to decrease the power from 8 to 7, the decimal point will move 1 place to the right. In this way the number is expressed as:
4.88 * 10⁸= 48.8*10⁷
Then:
9.24*10⁷ miles + 48.8*10⁷ miles
Now, the terms that do not have the powers in base ten are added and the power and the base are preserved:
(9.24 + 48.8)*10⁷ miles
58.04*10⁷ miles= 5.804*10⁸ miles
The total distance from the sun is 5.804*10⁸ miles.
