Power of 10

Okay kiddo, let's talk about the power of 10.

You know how we count with our fingers, right? We start with one finger and add another to get to two, and keep going until we reach ten.

Now, imagine we have a superpower that allows us to count without using our fingers. We can count as high as we want, but we need a way to keep track of all the zeros. That's where the power of 10 comes in.

Every time we count a group of ten, we add another zero to the end of our number. For example, ten is written as "10", but a hundred is written as "100" because it has two groups of ten in it. A thousand is "1,000" because it has three groups of ten in it.

When we add zeros like this, each zero represents a power of 10. So, a number with one zero (like 10) is 10 to the power of one. A number with two zeros (like 100) is 10 to the power of two. A number with three zeros (like 1,000) is 10 to the power of three, and so on.

The power of 10 is a way to show how big a number is compared to smaller ones. For example, one million is 10 to the power of six because it has six zeros (1,000,000). One billion is 10 to the power of nine because it has nine zeros (1,000,000,000).

So, the power of 10 helps us keep track of all the zeros and count really big numbers! Pretty cool, huh?