This video explains scientific notation as a concise way to represent extremely large and small numbers. It uses powers of ten to express the mass of the sun (approximately 2 x 10³⁰ kg) and the mass of a proton (approximately 1.673 x 10⁻²⁷ kg) as examples, highlighting the pattern of zeros and decimal placement related to the exponent. The video concludes with a challenge question calculating the number of protons in the sun.