The total weight of the two animals in scientific notation is 1.293 x 10⁴ lbs.
Well, first of all you need to know a bit about what scientific notation is. It is just a convenient way for scientists (and us as well) to write numbers that are very large or very small.
We can solve this question with simple arithmetic operation as follows:
4.23 x 10³ + 8.7 x 10³ =
(4.23 + 8.7) x 10³ =
12.93 x 10³
12.93 x 10³ is written in an improper format for scientific notation. We still need to do some work so that the absolute value is between 1 and 10 but not 10 itself.
12.93 x 1,000 =
12,930 =
1.293 x 10⁴
And so there you have it; the answer is 1.293 x 10⁴ lbs.
Learn more about what absolute value is: https://brainly.com/question/10657665
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