Why does Excel translate `=10**-2` to `=0.1`?

Question

Try pasting =10**-2 into a cell in MS Excel. After pressing Enter, it turns it to =0.1. I can't seem to find any documentation for **, but it appears to be a pretty odd exponentiation-like operator that cannot be used in an Excel formula (e.g., =A1**A2 is invalid`).

If this operator is not an exponentiation operator, what is it?

(N.B.: mathematically, 10^-2 = 0.01, not 0.1)

Answer 1

** is the same as E

=4E3 == 4**3 == 4000

Answer 2

It appears that A**B shifts the decimal point of A to the right by B positions, or mathematically A**B is equivalent to A*(10^B).

This is basically a scientific notation shorthand, so 1.23**-2 would show up as 1.23E-02 in the cell, so not only does it perform the shifting as described above but it will change that cell's category to 'Scientific'. Note that this is only the case if you enter the value into the cell without a leading =, so =1.23**-2 would keep the current default for the cell and display 0.0123.

In the case of 10**-2, the decimal point is being shifted to the left by 2 positions (since B is negative), resulting in 0.1.

Here are a few examples:

1**-2 => 0.01
1.2**2 => 120
.5**1 => 5