Questions: A scientist records the mass of a proton as . 0.0000000000000000000000016726231 gram Use a single digit times a power of 10 to estimate the mass.

Solution Steps

The mass of the proton is given as \(0.0000000000000000000000016726231\) grams. To express this in scientific notation, we need to identify the position of the first non-zero digit.

Count the number of decimal places from the first non-zero digit to the decimal point. In this case, the first non-zero digit is 1, and it is 24 places to the right of the decimal point.

Thus, the mass can be expressed in scientific notation as: \[ 1.6726231 \times 10^{-24} \]

To estimate the mass using a single digit times a power of 10, we round the coefficient \(1.6726231\) to the nearest single digit. The first digit is 1, and since the next digit is 6, we round up to 2.

Final Answer