What did I learn this week?

This week I was reviewing all the units. I learned something new when completely factoring polynomials.

For example, this is the equation: 9x² + 25… For this equation, it is impossible to factor. So, you just write “cannot factor”. You can’t factor this equation because it’s basically like writing 9x² + 0x + 25 and you would not be able to get to the middle number. To get to +25 it would be +5 multiplied by +5 and if we add those two numbers, it would equal 10 and not 0. Which means we would need one negative number to equal 0.

Another thing I learned was to solve polynomials in fractions.

For example this is the equation: (3x² y) (4x^³ y) ^–²…. For this equation, there is a negative exponent so we will have to turn the equation into a fraction. Then, we make two copies because of the exponent. It will look like this: 3x² y / 4x^³ y • 4x^³ y. Then we multiply the like terms. The final equation will look like this: 3x² y / 16x^⁶ y²..