Kirk brings the judges to the bridge of the Enterprise. Everyone on the ship leaves expect the judges. Before McCoy uses a sensor to remove the sound of the judge's heartbeats, Kirk tells the judges that the sensors can be increased by 1 to the 10th power. 1^10=1
Actually, the factor mentioned was 1 to the eighth power. I just mentioned this slip up in the math class I teach. The math on Star Trek classic is notoriously bad. But the math on TNG was graduate level quality.
I'm assuming that the writers thought that "1 to the 10th" sounded better than just saying "1".
Also, I think I remember him saying "1 to the 4th". I'm not sure though.
i beleive they ment 10 to the 10th power. or 1 with 10 zeros,
this was scripted long before they knew the series would be a cult classic and picked apart by every viewer or treckie
Just watched the restored/enhanced (ooooo, colorful!) episode. Kirk said one to the forth power. Writer's probably intended ten to the forth power and should perhaps have phrased it as "ten thousand-fold" to avoid the whole problem. As for riverdealers's comment: It”s all good fun to spot this stuff; nothing wrong with TRYING to make TODAY's writers and story line researchers avoid rubbish math and science boo-boos. Just to give one example: based on frequency of "slip-ups” and whoo-hoo that shows up on the "CSI franchises", quality of story-line research is waaaay down from the sixties.
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