Powers of ten............tenths decimal place............................there is no one decimal place........that is considered above the decimal.................................10 ones .........made by overlapping the pf with the negative numbers...

Just as we can count bigger and bigger numbers by using digits further and further to the left, so also we can count smaller and smaller numbers by using digits further and further to the right. Each place further to the right counts pieces that are 1/10 as big as the piece at the previous step, and the names are similar to the whole-number names, as you can see in the rows of the table below:

← swipe to view full table →

big units	name	fraction	name	small units
10	tens	1/10	tenths	0.1
100	hundreds	1/100	hundredths	0.01
1,000	thousands	1/1,000	thousandths	0.001
10,000	ten thousands	1/10,000	ten thousandths	0.000 1
100,000	hundred thousands	1/100,000	hundred thousandths	0.000 01

When the numbers get really small (that is, really far to the right of the dot), the names for those numbers get really big, so people usually switch to the "point" way of reading the numbers; it's easier.

Affiliate

ASK

When we're working with numbers smaller than the whole numbers (that is, when we're working with numbers with the "dot" or "decimal point"), we have to use zeroes as placeholders after the decimal point. For instance, the fraction "7/100" is written in decimal form as "0.07". If we didn't include that zero between the dot and the 7, we'd be saying "7/10", which wouldn't be what we'd meant. Also, for however many digits we have to the right of the decimal point, that's how many "decimal places" we have.

Take a close look at the correspondence between the numbers of zeroes in the "big units" expressions in the table above and the numbers of decimal places in the "small units" expressions. If you count them up, you'll see that they match. For instance, one thousand has three zeroes, and one thousandth has three decimal places.