What is 956.3 written in scientific notation?

The decimal number that is multiplied by 10 must be less than a two-digit number.

We move the decimal point to the left for this problem and stop where the decimal is less than a two-digit number.

So, 956.3 becomes 9.56 after moving two places to the left. Moving to the left makes the exponent of 10 positive. Moving to the right, makes the exponent of 10 negative.

We want our answer in the form

(decimal number) x 10^(n).

9.56 x 10^2

Understand???