exponent (redirected from Exponents)

exponent

[ikspō′nənt]

a superscript on a number that indicates how many times a number is to be multiplied by itself (for example, 3⁴ = 3 × 3 × 3 × 3 = 81). In medical or scientific reports, powers of 10 are commonly used to indicate very large or very small numbers, such as in the examples 10⁶ representing 1,000,000 or 10^-6 representing 1/1,000,000. Exponents also are indicated by prefixes, such as mega- for 10⁶ and micro- for 10^-6.