start with 3,250,000 we need to put that into scientific notation...
in scientific notation... our decimal number mus be <10 but >1
so with this... it would be 3.25 X 10^6
we know that the exponent is 6 because after the 3 (which is the number furthest to the left), we count how man digits there are until we get to the ones place, we also include the ones place when counting the number of digits
remember: we are not counting the values of the digit, just knowing that the digit is there... so a digit in the 10,00's spot is counted as 1, no matter what nmber the digit is
since there are 6 digits after the 3, our exponent is 6
so the answer is 3.25 X 10^6