I have been pondering over this one for a couple of daysnow...Everything I come

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I have been pondering over this one for a couple of daysnow...Everything I come up with confuses me, and I can't get veryfar with it. Problem: Assume you have been hired by the US Geological Survey andbrovided a 16-bit binary computer. We need to measure if thesea floor spreading is actually occuring underneath the PacificOcean, about 3 miles below the surface of the water. We alsoneed to compute how long it will take for the crust (at location Xon the ocean floor) to travel toward the Mariana trench, thedeepest point on earth (7 miles deep).  The trench issome 10,000 miles away from X. The crust ages as ittravels. At the trench, the crust gets subducted back intothe earth's core. While we are going to measure the spreadingaccurately, we begin with an initial guess-estimate of 2 inches peryear. The GPS can track daily movements of the crust and hasa resolution of 0.001 inch. Define an exponential scientificnotation (similar to the IEEE format) for the problem. Thatis, specifically how many bits would you allocate for the mantissaand exponent, respectively. The mantissa must equal theresolution of the GPS, if not offer greater accuracy. Ignorethe sign of the mantissa (Assume we are only interested in positivenumbers). Clearly explain your rationale. I may be getting overwhelmed due to the amount of information,but I just seem to keep confusing myself...Any help at all would begreat! Problem: Assume you have been hired by the US Geological Survey andbrovided a 16-bit binary computer. We need to measure if thesea floor spreading is actually occuring underneath the PacificOcean, about 3 miles below the surface of the water. We alsoneed to compute how long it will take for the crust (at location Xon the ocean floor) to travel toward the Mariana trench, thedeepest point on earth (7 miles deep).  The trench issome 10,000 miles away from X. The crust ages as ittravels. At the trench, the crust gets subducted back intothe earth's core. While we are going to measure the spreadingaccurately, we begin with an initial guess-estimate of 2 inches peryear. The GPS can track daily movements of the crust and hasa resolution of 0.001 inch. Define an exponential scientificnotation (similar to the IEEE format) for the problem. Thatis, specifically how many bits would you allocate for the mantissaand exponent, respectively. The mantissa must equal theresolution of the GPS, if not offer greater accuracy. Ignorethe sign of the mantissa (Assume we are only interested in positivenumbers). Clearly explain your rationale. I may be getting overwhelmed due to the amount of information,but I just seem to keep confusing myself...Any help at all would begreat!

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Bump, I'm having trouble with this question also.

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