Scientific notation is a commonly used condensed way of displaying very large numbers or very small numbers. For instance. lets say we have the following number: '24,000,000,000,000' This number Twenty-four trillion can be displayed as such in scientific notation. You first take all the digits that are not zeros and create a decimal between 1 and 10, then multiply by ten to the power of however many times the decimal point should be moved to get the origonal value. If you move the decimal to the left then the exponent will be negitive how many times you moved it. For moving to the right its positive.
See this article if you would like to learn more about scientific notation