February 18: Negative Exponents

Today we learned about negative exponents.  Yesterday when we discussed zero exponents, we discovered that if the exponent is decreased, we divide by the base.  This pattern continues down from zero into the negatives!  So if a base is raised to a negative, it does not give a negative number, but it continues to divide by the base!

Rule:

x ^-m  =    1  

            x ^m

for any value x other than zero

Click here to download today's homework.