I am using Quantities (units) in Mathematica 11.3 and would like to express the numerical portion of the output in scientific notation. The command ScientificForm[quantity] does not work.
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
3
1 Answer
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
4
When the argument to Quantity is in arbitrary precision (e.g. an exact integer), it does not get converted automatically to scientific notation. You can force the conversion if you numericize the input, converting it e.g. to machine precision:
Quantity[2000000, "Kilograms"]
N @ Quantity[2000000, "Kilograms"]
Note that, however, even machine precision numbers whose exponents are "small" according to some preset threshold do not get converted to scientific notation.
Quantity[2000., "Kilograms"]
I have not (yet) found a way to force that conversion at will.
-
2$\begingroup$ Looking at some DVs (
QuantityUnits`Private`makeNumberValue) it looks like the10^6cutoff is hardcoded... $\endgroup$– b3m2a1Commented Mar 4, 2019 at 0:40 -
$\begingroup$ @b3m2a1 Interesting, thank you for digging it up. It's unfortunate that the cutoff is hardcoded. $\endgroup$– MarcoBCommented Mar 4, 2019 at 1:30
-
2$\begingroup$ On the other hand this should work (it does for me):
Quantity[ScientificForm[10.^5], "USDollars"]$\endgroup$– b3m2a1Commented Mar 4, 2019 at 1:31 -
$\begingroup$ @b3m2a1 ... as does, interestingly,
ScientificForm[N@Quantity[1000, "Kilograms"]]which, I see now, was suggested by Carl Woll in comment. $\endgroup$– MarcoBCommented Mar 4, 2019 at 1:40
Quantity[0.000000000000009, "Joules"]has the outputQuantity[9.\[CenterDot]10^-15, "Joules"]. If you're using something likeQuantity[9/Pi*-1000000, "Joules"], you may need to doN@Quantity[9/Pi*-1000000, "Joules"], which results in the outputQuantity[-2.86479\[CenterDot]10^6, "Joules"]. $\endgroup$ScientificForm[N @ quantity]do what you want? $\endgroup$