Question

A newborn baby has about 26,000,000,000 cells. An adult has about 4.94 × 10 13 cells. About how many times as many cells does an adult have than a newborn? Write your estimate in standard notation.

Answer 1

First, to write the adult's cell count in standard notation, move the decimal over 13 places to the right:

$4.94 * 10^{13} \\ 49,400,000,000,000$

Next, to find how many times more cells an adult has than a newborn, set it up like this:

$\frac{adult}{newborn} = \frac{49,400,000,000,000}{26,000,000,000} = \frac{49,400}{26} = 1900$

An adult has 1900 times the amount of cells than a newborn.