title: Automatically process numbers in e (scientific) notation in python
body: <p>I am reading in data files from a mass spectrometer and many of the numbers are in e form e.g.</p>
  
  <pre><code>4096.26 5.785e1
  4096.29 5.784e1
  4096.31 5.784e1
  4096.33 5.784e1
  4096.36 5.783e1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am planning on using the split function to get the two numbers out, but I wanted to know is there a function to convert the second column into python floats? I know I could do it with regular expressions but thought there might be a better way</p>
  
  <p>Thank you</p>