![\"Artist's](\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/121\/2016\/06\/01183303\/Voyager_spacecraft.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAn artist’s concept of Voyager in flight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Mathematicians, scientists, and economists commonly encounter very large and very small numbers. \u00a0For example, Star Wars fans may remember Han Solo bragging about the Millennium Falcon<\/em>‘s ability to make the Kessel Run in less than\u00a0[latex]12[\/latex] parsecs in Episode IV. \u00a0He was referring to a smuggler’s route with sections\u00a0that were flown in hyperspace, making length an important factor in how quickly a ship could make the run.<\/p>\n In reality, a parsec is a unit of length used to measure large distances to objects outside the solar system. A parsec is equal to about\u00a0[latex]31[\/latex] trillion kilometers or\u00a0[latex]19[\/latex] trillion miles\u00a0in length. Rather than writing all the zeros associated with the number\u00a0[latex]1[\/latex] trillion [latex](1,000,000,000,000)[\/latex], we commonly use the written words or scientific notation. Scientific notation uses exponents to represent the number of zeros that come before or after the important digits of a very small or large number. Using scientific notation,\u00a0[latex]19[\/latex] trillion miles would be written as [latex]{1.9}\\times{10}^{13}[\/latex] miles.<\/p>\n The most distant space probe, Voyager\u00a0[latex]1[\/latex], was\u00a0[latex]0.0006[\/latex] parsecs from Earth as of March\u00a0[latex]2015[\/latex]. It took Voyager\u00a0[latex]37[\/latex] years to cover that distance. Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September\u00a0[latex]5, 1977[\/latex]. As of\u00a0[latex]2013[\/latex], the probe was moving with a relative velocity to the sun of about\u00a0[latex]17030[\/latex] m\/s. With the velocity the probe is currently maintaining, Voyager\u00a0[latex]1[\/latex] is traveling about\u00a0[latex]325[\/latex] million miles per year, or\u00a0[latex]520[\/latex] million kilometers per year. Here are some more distances to well-known astronomical objects in parsecs:<\/p>\n In this module, you will learn the\u00a0rules for algebraic operations on terms with exponents then apply them to calculations involving very large or small numbers.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t \n
Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t