The measurement 10 050 L contains five significant figures.
Here’s the breakdown:
- The digits 1 and 0 before the thousand mark are counted as significant because they are non-zero digits.
- The two zeros that come after the 5 are also counted as significant because they are trailing zeros in a number with a decimal point (indicated here by the unit of liters, L).
- Trailing zeros in a whole number without a decimal point do not count as significant, but because the zeros here follow a non-zero digit and the measurement includes a decimal indicator (implied by the unit), they are significant.
Therefore, the total count is 1 (for the digit ‘1’) + 1 (for the first ‘0’) + 1 (for ‘5’) + 2 (for the two trailing zeros) = 5 significant figures.