Question

The number of minutes in one hour is 60, and the number of seconds in one hour is 3600. Then their order of magnitude, respectively are:
A.${10^1},{10^2}$
B. ${10^2},{10^4}$
C. ${10^1},{10^3}$
D. ${10^1},{10^2}$

Answer 1

Scientific notation may be a way of writing numbers that are overage or small to be conveniently written as a decimal. For example, consider the number$840,000,000,000,000$. It’s a rather large number to write out. The scientific notation for this number is $8.40 \times {10^{14}}$. Scientific notation follows this general format
$x \times {10^y}$
In this format, x is that the value of the measurement with all placeholder zeros removed. In the example above, x is 8.4. The x is multiplied by a factor ${10^y}$, which indicates the number of placeholder zeros in the measurement. Placeholder zeros are those at the end of a number that is 10 or greater, and at the beginning of a decimal number that is less than 1. In the example above, the factor is${10^{14}}$.

Complete step by step answer:
The term order of magnitude refers to the power of 10 when numbers are expressed in scientific notation. Quantities that have the same power of 10 when expressed in scientific notation, or come close to it, are said to be of the same order of magnitude.
The number of minutes in one hour is 60 and the number of seconds in one hour is 3600. Thus the order of magnitude of a minute is of tens, i.e., ${10^1}$ an order of magnitude of seconds is of thousands i.e. ${10^2}$

So, the correct answer is “Option A”.

Note:
Order of magnitude is helpful to estimate the magnitude of a number in terms of its powers of ten without making the actual calculation. It can be beneficial to estimate the large distances, for example, the distance between the moon and the earth.