When expressed in scientific notation, how should 0.00053 be represented?

To express the number 0.00053 in scientific notation, the goal is to represent it in the form (a \times 10^n), where (a) is a number greater than or equal to 1 but less than 10, and (n) is an integer.

Starting with the number 0.00053, we need to move the decimal point to the right until we have a number between 1 and 10. By moving the decimal point three places to the right, we convert 0.00053 into 5.3. Each time the decimal is moved to the right, it corresponds to decreasing the exponent of 10 by 1. Thus, because we moved the decimal point three spaces to the right, we express this as:

[ 5.3 \times 10^{-4} ]

This shows that 5.3 is the significant figure, and since we moved the decimal to the right to convert to standard form, the exponent is negative.

This reasoning confirms that the correct representation of 0.00053 in scientific notation is (5.3 \times 10^{-4}).