If you were asked to express the weight in ounces of a ladybug in scientific notation with the exponent of the 10 be positive or negative

The exponent would be negative because a ladybug's weight in ounces would be a really small decimal. In scientific notation, really big numbers have a positive exponent and really small numbers have a negative exponent.
Ex. 200,000,000 would be 2×10^8
.00000002 would be 2×10^-8