# Struggling with getting equations to work

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 • Replace ( and ) with \left ( and \right) – Scott Seidman Oct 23 '16 at 23:33 • 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 0:03 ## 2 Answers 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  \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.