ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces powers and develop confidence in their use and develops an appreciation of power rules and their function. It shows how scientific notation can be used to express a range of numerical values. Within the life sciences there are many instances where a number needs to be multiplied by itself several times. Indices are important in life sciences because biologists are required to use very large and very small numbers. One problem faced in the life sciences is that of the large range of values required. For example, a scientist measuring the size of bacteria may be working at the level of 0.000 001 m yet if the same scientist were to measure the number of bacteria in 1 ml of culture(s) he may well find numbers in the region of 1 000 000 or more.
