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This leads to the Quotient to a Power Property for Exponents .
If and are real numbers, , and is a counting number, then
To raise a fraction to a power, raise the numerator and denominator to that power.
An example with numbers may help you understand this property:
Simplify: ⓐ ⓑ ⓒ
ⓐ
Use the Quotient Property, . | |
Simplify. |
Use the Quotient Property, . | |
Simplify. |
Raise the numerator and denominator to the third power. |
We’ll now summarize all the properties of exponents so they are all together to refer to as we simplify expressions using several properties. Notice that they are now defined for whole number exponents.
If are real numbers, and are whole numbers, then
Simplify:
Notice that after we simplified the denominator in the first step, the numerator and the denominator were equal. So the final value is equal to 1.
Simplify:
Here we cannot simplify inside the parentheses first, since the bases are not the same.
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