Chloe T. p3

Week-3

During this week in math I learned a new exponent law. In the past we only learned the multi. law, division law and the power. So we never got to use negative exponents so this is our first time learning about it. So far, it’s going pretty good but I still end up making a few mistakes sometimes.

Negative exponent law

Example #1:

You use the negative exponent law only when the exponent is a negative. For example, start with the number 6¯³, it’s also the same as 6¯³/1. Since there is a negative exponent (-3), we will need to reciprocate them. Reciprocating means to flip the denominator and the numerator, we do that so that negative exponent can become positive. So the answer we get is 1/6³.

Example #2:

For our second example we are going to try a harder one. We will start with (2a⁶/a¯²)² for our example, first for me I would start with the power law. So, we need two copies of each one in the brackets, that gives us 4a¹²/a¯4 ←(exponent). With the negative exponent still at the bottom, we need to use the negative exponent law and put it to the top. Now that the fraction is gone, we have 4a¹² • a⁴ and the last step is to just use the multiplication law. Our answer that we end up with is 4a¹⁶.