One of the construction workers likes to listen to music on the job. Unfortunately, he also has a bad habit of accidentally dropping his music player into the ravine! Luckily, his daughter is good with physics and has built a safety balloon for his latest music player that will release after the music player has been falling for 1 second. Where t is the amount of time since the construction worker dropped his music player. Will the balloon release in time?

squares, rhombus, rectangles

the largest number of the four options is 1.8 x 10-2

you have it in scientific notation.

1.80 x 10-6   = 0.00000180

1.80 x 10-4   = 0.000180 (bigger, or "less small", than the former one)

so

1.8 x 10-2       = 0.0180. as you see. the "less small", or the biggest one of them all.

as you have negative exponent, it means you are dividing 1.8 by 100 (i.e. moving the dot towards left, two times).

if you had positive exponent for the scientific notation, power of tenths, you would be multiplying times 100 (moving the dot towards right) as below:

1.8 x (10)2 = 180

so. if you have negative exponent in scientific notation, move the dot toward left. if it is positive, toward right as many times the exponent tells you.

so, converting firstly the mixed fractions to improper fractions and then "adding".