scientific notation

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A method of writing or displaying numbers in terms of a decimal number between 1 and 10 multiplied by a power of 10. The scientific notation of 10,492, for example, is 1.0492 × 10⁴.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun mathematics a method of writing, or of displaying real numbers as a decimal number between 1 and 10 followed by an integer power of 10
• noun mathematics an alternative format of such a decimal number immediately followed by E and an integer