Fractions can be intimidating enough, but wrap some exponents around them and they look darn right scary. But don’t worry! This guide will give you some tips for expanding exponential notation out so that these problems look just like plain old fraction multiplication problems!
Powers of Fractions are Just More Fractions
When you have something (the “base number”) raised to a power using an exponent, it’s just a fancy way of showing repeated multiplication. When that base number is a fraction, it’s really no more complicated than multiplying the same fraction multiple times.
What About Negative Exponents?
When you have a base number in a value shown in exponential notation, and that number is raised to a negative power, we know you need to take the reciprocal of the base before expanding it out to repeated multiplication. If your encounter a fraction with a negative exponent, the process is the same… Just take the reciprocal of the fraction before expanding it out for the multiplication step.
