While dissolving 80.0 g of ammonium nitrate in 50.0 mL of water at room temperature, you observe that the temperature of the solution
decreases by 5.0°C and the vessel feels cold to the touch. You
realize that the formation of the solution must be an endothermic
process!

in scientific notation, the value of the  speed of light in a vacuum

  will be written as 2.995 * 10^8. when this value is represented in the form of

  a * 10^b, then, a = 2.995 and b = 8.

the value of the speed of light in a vacuum given above can also be rounded up to approximately 300000000. in this case, the scientific notation will be written as 3 *10^8.

most historians agree that gabriel mouton, the vicar of st. paul’s church in lyons, france, is the “founding father” of the metric system. he proposed a decimal system of measurement in 1670. mouton based it on the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the earth (now called a nautical mile, 1852 meters). he also proposed the swing-length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second as the unit of length (about 25 cm). a pendulum beating with this length would have been fairly easy to produce, thus facilitating the widespread distribution of uniform standards. over the years, his work was revised, improved, and extended by a number of french scientists.

the political sponsor of weights and measures reform in the french revolutionary national assembly was the bishop of autun, better known as talleyrand. under his auspices, the french academy appointed several committees to carry out the work of developing a usable system of weights and measures for france. one of the committees recommended a decimalized measurement system based upon a length equal to one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant of the earth’s meridian (i.e., one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the north pole).