Struggling with getting equations to work

Question

I've had a hard look for answers to my problem but haven't managed to find any. This is driving me nuts.

    \underline{Copper:} \[3.142\times \(2.48\times \10^-^3)^\frac{2}{4}=4.83\times \10^-^6m^2\]

    \underline{Error\%:}  \[2(\frac{0.01}{2.48}\times \100)=0.81\%\]


    \underline{Copper-Nickel:} \[3.142\times \(2.2\times \10^-^3)^\frac{2}{4}=3.80\times \10^-^6m^2\]

    \underline{Error\%:} \[2(\frac{0.01}{2.20}\times \100)=0.90\%\]

I'm trying to get these equations to display in my report but I keep getting:

Bad math environment delimiter. \underline{Copper:} \[3.142\times \(

and

Undefined control sequence. ...ne{Copper:} \[3.142\times \(2.48\times \1

and

Double superscript. ...opper:} \[3.142\times \(2.48\times \10^-^

all over the place. I'm a total newbie at latex and this is the last thing I need to nail before I can submit my report but I cannot for the life of me figure out what is wrong. Any help appreciated.

Cheers

Oliver R

Please, show as your code as small complete document starting with \documentclass{...} nd ending with \end{documenn}, which cause your headache. From erors I suspect that you have somewhere wrongly nested math environments. And, welcome to TeX.SE — Zarko, Oct 23 '16 at 23:32
In 3.142\times \(2.48\times you have \(, which means math mode. We can deduce, that you simply want ( here. — Przemysław Scherwentke, Oct 23 '16 at 23:39
@ScottSeidman -- \left and \right are not needed here. and in general, they should usually be avoided; see Replace regular parenthesis with stretching versions — barbara beeton, Oct 24 '16 at 00:03

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 23 '16 at 23:42

There are a few issues with the code, taking the first line, what you probably want is \underline{Copper:} \[3.142\times (2.48 \times 10^{-3})^{\frac{2}{4}}=4.83\times 10^{-6}m^2\].

You have some \1 which is not a defined command - numbers can be written freely and not as macros, and a \( which starts inline maths environment which you don't want as \[ has already started a display maths environment. Finally a^2 will print a superscript two, but a^2^3 will not print 23 as superscript, what you are looking for is not 10^-^3 but 10^{-3}.

For the purpose of printing units you may want to look into the siunitx package.

Oh you beaut. That's solved it perfectly. Thanks a million. – Oliver R Platt Oct 23 '16 at 23:53 — Oliver R Platt, Oct 23 '16 at 23:53

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 25 '16 at 14:16

 \begin{document}
 {\underline{Copper:}} \[3.142\times\left ( 2.48 \times ^{-3} 
        \right)^{\frac{2}{4}}=4.83 \times 10^{-6} m^2\]

  \underline{Error\%:}  \[2\left(\frac{0.01}{2.48}\times 100\right)=0.81
  \%\]


 {\underline{Copper-Nickel:}} \[3.142\times \left(2.2\times 
   10{-^3}\right)^{\frac{2}{4}}=3.80\times 10^{-^6}m^2\]

  {\underline{Error\%:}} \[2(\frac{0.01}{2.20}\times 100)=0.90\%\]
  \end{document}
  % I hope this corrected version works for you.

Struggling with getting equations to work

2 Answers2