Sig Fig Help! [ENDORSED]

[Bita Ghanei 1F]

Do 1.0003 and 0.0003 have the same number of sig figs? Could someone please clarify this? Thanks!

[Chem_Mod]

1.0003 has 5 sigfigs because the zeros are between two non zero numbers while 0.0003 only has one sigfig because leading zeros are not significant.

[EvanWang]

1.0003 has 5 significant figures because the zeroes come between nonzero digits. 0.0003 only has 1 significant figure. This is because you can rewrite it as 3x10^-4 (which only has one sigfig). The leading zeroes are not significant even if they come after a decimal point.

[asannajust_1J]

The leading zeroes do not influence sig figs unless you are adding, then the decimal place is important.

[Jared Khoo 1G]

Something that may be helpful is to write it in scientific notation as .0003 would be 3 * 10^-4 which you can see is 1 significant figure, compared to something like 1.0003 * 10⁰ which is 5.

[Rida Ismail 2E]

if there is a decimal place, like in the situation of 1.0003 you would start counting from the left and you would start counting from the first non-zero number. so in 1.0003 there are 5 sig figs but in 0.00007 there is only 1 sig fig

if there is no decimal place, like 67, you would start counting from the right and start from the first non-zero number. so in the case of 67 there is 2 sig figs but in 106000 there are only 3 sif figs

zeros that are inclosed within other non-zero numbers are always significant.

[Abigail Sanders 1E]

The first number (1.0003) has 5 significant figures while (0.0003) contains one significant figure. If you would like a more indepth explanation about significant figures I know that Dr. Lavelle has a very useful worksheet on his website regarding the significant figures rules.