To set the axis of a plot with matplotlib in Python to scientific formation, an easy way is to use ticklabel_format, the documentation is here.

It is used like this

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
#ploting something here
plt.ticklabel_format(axis='x', style='sci', scilimits=(-2,2))
plt.show()


where

axis can be ‘x‘, ‘y‘ or ‘both‘

style can be ‘sci‘ for scientific notation and ‘plain‘ to force plain style.

scilimits specify from what power of 10 scientific notation should be used.

For a working example, see this
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
#creating something to plot
x=np.arange(start=0, stop=10000, step=100)
y=np.random.rand(len(x))
y=x*y
#ploting it
plt.plot(x,y, 'ro', markersize=12)
plt.ticklabel_format(axis='both', style='sci', scilimits=(-2,2))
plt.show()