0

I had a doubt today when our teacher told us this:

A logarithm of the form log N can be written as n + f, where n is an integer known as the characteristic, and f is a fraction where 0 < f < 1.

I was confused by the last part and asked him after class the mantissa of the log of 100. He said the characteristic would be 2 and the mantissa would be .0000 (log 100 = 2 + 0). I asked him if that was invalid because he mentioned that f could not be equal to zero, he said that 0 and .0000 are two different things. To confirm, I put that in Repelit, and this is what I got with Java: screenshot

I said okay, and I looked back and front and he was no longer there. He somehow disappeared from the class! I can't even imagine how fast a 62-year-old can run. But I still didn't get my answer. Can f be zero?

Abhinav
  • 1
  • Yes and your case of $\log_{10}(100)=2.0000$ is an example where it is. You can see $.0000$ in the top left corner of a page of logarithms. This is exactly $0$ when you start from an exact power of $10$ though all the other logarithms on that page are approximations – Henry Jun 24 '22 at 15:51
  • Sure, thanks for answering my question : ) – Abhinav Jun 25 '22 at 01:25

0 Answers0