Laws of indices can be justified by looking at patterns that emerge when rewriting powers of a term. Anything to the power of 0 is 1, negative powers produce fractions, and fractional powers produce roots. These patterns can be seen when expanding out expressions and collecting like terms, and proving one law can help prove other laws, like using the negative power law to justify the fractional indices law.
Laws of indices can be justified by looking at patterns that emerge when rewriting powers of a term. Anything to the power of 0 is 1, negative powers produce fractions, and fractional powers produce roots. These patterns can be seen when expanding out expressions and collecting like terms, and proving one law can help prove other laws, like using the negative power law to justify the fractional indices law.
Laws of indices can be justified by looking at patterns that emerge when rewriting powers of a term. Anything to the power of 0 is 1, negative powers produce fractions, and fractional powers produce roots. These patterns can be seen when expanding out expressions and collecting like terms, and proving one law can help prove other laws, like using the negative power law to justify the fractional indices law.
"ractional powers produce roots Example #ake the following as an e$ample %an we now generalise this statement to include m&s and n&s?
'e(write the powers of a
Substitute these e$pressions into the original sum and total Show that the answers are the same %ould this idea be of any help? What is happening as you mo!e through the pattern? )ow could this help you to *ustify some of the laws?
+ther ideas If you ha!e pro!en a law you may use it to pro!e another law )ow could you use this idea to *ustify the fractional indices law?