LAB: Order of Magnitude Objective In Physics it is often useful to make a rough calculation or estimation. In addition, numbers are often so large or small that we don't need the number to have many digits. This lab will familiarize you with the technique of order of magnitude estimation and working with power of tens. Materials Stopwatch (may use app in phone/tablet/pc) Theory Power of Ten Normal Notation Word Metric Prefix Abbrev 1012 1,000,000,000,000 trillion Tera T 109 1,000,000,000 billion Giga G 106 1,000,000 million Mega M 103 1,000 thousand kilo k 100 1 one - - 10-2 0.01 hundredth centi C 10-3 0.001 thousandth milli m 10-6 0.000001 millionth micro ("mu") 10-9 0.000000001 billionth nano n Procedure Order of Magnitude 1