Numbers that are very large or very small are expressed in scientific notation, in terms of powers of ten:

The rules for multiplying or dividing numbers in scientific notation are as follows:

General rules for quantities that have exponents are as follows:

Lastly, the inverse of exponents is logarithms, used to quickly manipulate large or small numbers:

Converting scientific notation to English requires the use of the following prefixes or suffices:

An interesting display of powers of ten with respect to the size of atoms to galaxies, can be found here.