To find out how many households a power station can serve, we need to divide the total amount of electricity generated by the power station by the amount of electricity used by each household.
Given:
Amount of electricity generated by power station = 2.496×10^10 kWh
Amount of electricity used by average American household = 1.04×10^4 kWh
To solve this problem, we can use the following formula:
Number of households = (Total amount of electricity generated) / (Amount of electricity used by each household)
Plugging in the values given:
Number of households = (2.496×10^10 kWh) / (1.04×10^4 kWh)
When we divide numbers written in scientific notation, we subtract the exponents:
Number of households = 2.496×10^10 / 1.04×10^4
To divide, we divide the coefficients and subtract the exponents:
Number of households = (2.496 / 1.04) × 10^(10 - 4)
Simplifying the numerator:
Number of households = 2.4 × 10^6
Therefore, the power station can serve 2.4×10^6 households.