BRO BAIRD: Okay, you guys have done exponents such as 2 to the fifth, which was, ooh, what

did that five mean again? Two times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2, five of them, turned out to be
32. Now, we did some exponents, there are even some formulas that have some exponents in
them. That was kind of nice. Now we’re going to do some rules that deal with exponents. Now,
I’m going to change this to a number. So, we have something like X to the fifth, because it could
be any number out there. And see what happened when we take X to the fifth? And we times it
by X squared. And remember what this is, this is five of the put together. This guy is two of
them put together. How many do we have then? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven of them.
We’d write that like that. We’re timesing these over here, and we ended up five and two equals
seven. Let’s try another one. X to the third times X to the seventh. Well, that’s X to the third,
and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Three, 7, that’s 10. About this time, you see a pattern.
Whatever this guy is, and that guy, if these are the exact same--so we can combine and say
they’re all together into one thing--these two exponents will add, while these guys are
multiplying.

So if we have X to the ninth times X to the fifteenth, that’s going to be 9 plus 15, X to the
twenty-fourth. Notice that we’ll work with the number two, the number seven, the number
eight, anything for X. You can put an M here, M to the fifth times M to the eighteenth, that’s
going to equal M to the twenty-third power. Seven cubed times 7 to the fourth is going to be 7
to the seventh. Test that out on your calculator; see if it really works. Take the 7 cubed times
the 7 to the fourth, and then separately type in 7 to the seventh to see if that actually works.
You’ll find out it does, works for any number here at all. It’s pretty cool. So, we’re going to write
this pattern. If I have X to the M times an X to the N, it’s an X to the M plus N. You add
exponents when multiplying. Multiplying, add exponents. You have to multiply the same base
there in order to get that to work.

Okay, let’s try the next rule. See what happens when you take X squared, and take that cubed.
This means we have X squared times X squared times X squared. Well, by that first rule, we
have 2 plus 2 plus 2 is 6. Two and a three gives us a six. Let’s try another one. X to the seventh
squared. It’s going to be X to the seventh times X to the seventh. According to that first rule, 7
and 7 is 14. Any idea what happens there? We have an exponent, when you’re raising this to an
exponent, you get multiplication. So, two cubed to the seventh power, it’s going to be two to
the twenty-first. These exponents will multiply. That’s what we just came up with.

If we want to write it as a pattern, we’d go over here and we’d say, “Okay, any number--we
don’t know what number it is--it’s raised to one power, and that whole thing gets raised to
another power. So this is kind of how it’s written in the book, even though that looks a little bit
odd. I kind of like thinking about it like that, you’re welcome to do it either way. So, if your
exponent, and you’re raising it to a power, that means you multiply.
All righty, let’s try another one. B to the seventh divided. So, instead of multiplying like we did
over here, we’re going to divide B squared. Okay, see let’s see what happens with those if we
can simplify those at all. This is seven--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, good--divided by
two of them. Multiplication, division, they cancel. One, two, three, four, five of them left. Ooh.
Let’s see if you picked up on the pattern. We have X to the sixth over X to the fourth, what do
you think it will be? Based on this, can do the subtraction thing over there, and we got X
squared. That’s exactly what happens. When you’re multiplying, you end up adding. If you go
the other direction, there we go. So that becomes a rule, and you can try it again if you’d like.
Take two to the sixteenth power, and divide it by two to the thirteenth power. Sixteen minus
13 is 3. Now, notice the answer’s not three, just the exponent on the two. This says we have 16
twos all timesing together. We divided off 13 of those twos. And so we have three of them left.

So, that’s just kind of going on there. However, this creates kind of an issue. We’ve got this
great, slick way of taking care and simplifying those, so we don’t have to write them all out, and
punch them into the calculator and see what it works. We’ve got kind of a snappy way of doing
this; however, you remember back when we did arithmetic with just numbers? And we talked
about, that a negative number may or may not like, really exist. Have you ever seen negative
five trees in the forest? It doesn’t make sense. Negative seven cars in a parking lot? Doesn’t
make sense. We’ve just started subtracting with exponents, which means we might end up with
something odd. I’ll show you what I mean. Let’s take this problem right here, so, 7 minus 2 is 5.
What if we switched it over? Two minus 7 is a negative 5. Now, if you remember what an
exponent is, this is telling you how many B’s are timesing together. This says, “Well, we have
seven B’s timesing together down here.”

Have you ever seen B timesed by itself negative five times? It doesn’t make any sense, how do
you have a B and a B and a B negative five times? It’s a good point, but let’s recall what this
negative means. Other direction; what is the other direction when it comes to multiplication?
The other direction is division, and that’s exactly what happens. Let’s look at this in slow
motion. You have B squared on top, and that on the bottom. These two cancel, still leaves the
one up here. So that means that this, and this must be the same thing. B to the negative fifth
power means you’re dividing by B five times, and that becomes…that’s what a negative
exponent means. It has to be that. So, let’s do one with, so if you have X to the negative
seventh power, all that means is that you’re dividing by X seven times. And this is negative 7 X
to the seventh. That’s what a negative exponent does; it means you’re then dividing.

Now, you guys have done some scientific notation, perhaps you’ve run into it. And you have
something like 5 times 10 to the negative eighth power, it just means you’ve divided by 10 eight
times. And that’s exactly the connection we’re going for. But a negative exponent here just
means it’s divided down there. Let’s write that over here. So, if we have X to the negative N
power, that’ll be the rule that you use right there. So, there’s another one that’s kind of
interesting, that not everybody is okay with. So, you’ll have to think about this one as we do it.
We’re going to look at what any number to the zero power means. You’re like, “Oh, easy, that’s
zero.” Not so fast, not so fast. Let’s look it for a minute. Let’s do a couple that are nice, X to the
fifth over X cubed. Which rule? We do this one right here, 5 minus 3 gives us 2. So, following
that same rule, what if I did X to the fifth over X to the fifth? It’s X to what power? Five minus 5
is zero, and you’re like, “Oh, well, don’t do that.” What’s anything divided by itself? One. Ooh,
which will make you think. Anything to the zero power means we have timesed it by something,
and then we’ve divided off by that exact same thing. We’ve gotten rid of all the times it’s
timesing itself. That’s why we’re left with one.

Now, you should give this a try in your calculator. Take 7--and you should have your little X to
the Y button--to the zero power. Take out your calculator, punch it in: 7 to the zero power, and
you will get 1. Take 8 to the zero power, you’ll get 1. Nineteen to the zero power is 1. And,
they’re all 1. I’m going to show you this in one more way, make sure we can do it. Let’s take the
number 2, and look at a bunch of powers of it. Two to the third power, 8, that’s 2 times 2 times
2. Two to the second power--2 squared--is 4. Two to the 1 power, that’s just 2; we’ll come back
to that guy in a minute.

So, negative exponent, remember what it does? It says it’s 1/2 to that power, so this is 1/2,
one-half. Go ahead and try that in your calculator: 2 to the negative 1 power. Make sure you
get .5 coming out of there, change it into a fraction, see 1/2. To the negative 2 is 1 over 2
squared, 1/4. Two to the negative 3, 1/8. An interesting side note, you guys have a button on
your calculator that has X to the negative 1. Some of you guys don’t have that button but you
have this button, where you take whatever number you had, and you flip it over. These two are
the same thing. If you take a negative 1 power--putting it on the bottom with the 1--that’s the
same thing as this. This is the reciprocal button. You can just take the number 5, and you hit the
button and you’ll get 1/5, or .2. Hit it again, and you’ll flip it back to 5, and it just keeps flipping
it back and forth. Okay. Well, let’s look at what happens. The pattern, if I take away a 2, notice
each one of these I’m diving by 2, and I keep doing it. So, there’s only one number that actually
fits in that pattern, and it’s the number 1. Anything to the zero power is 1, which makes some
of the problems into relatively easy.

Let’s write this over here as a rule, “anything to the zero power is 1.” So, I’m going to give you a
really tough problem: 3 X to the seventh all to the fourth power, all the zero. Anything to the
zeroth power equals 1. Now, let’s do some of these problems, it’ll be a little bit, let’s do that
one without that zero there. Now, it’s saying everything in here is to the fourth power. So, 3 to
the fourth power. Three times 3 times 3 times 3, you should get an 81. Three times 3 is 9, times
3 is 27, twenty-seven times 3 is where we get 81. Now, what happens here? X to the seventh to
the fourth. Which rule is that going to go under? It’s going to go under that one right there.
So we have, X to the twenty-eighth. Notice, we did 3 to the fourth power. Here we didn’t do 7
times 7 times 7 times 7, we had to use rule. This is X to the seventh four times. Two X to the
fifth times 3X to the nineteenth power. The 2 and the 3 are fine, that’s a 6. X to the fifth and X
to the nineteenth, look up there, top row, and you have the rule where, oh, 5 plus 19, 24. Let’s
try one more that’s a little bit tougher. Okay, 2 and 8 reduced to 1/4, now we look at this guy. X
cubed over X to the negative 7. If you’re using this rule right here, you’re going to take 3,
subtract a negative 7, not 4. Three minus, minus 7 is 10. That may take a little bit of getting
used to. So as you practice these, you may need to ask a few questions, that’s perfectly all right.

Let’s try one more. Okay, so we have 5X to the seventh times 3X to the fifth all squared. Now,
we got to take care of this, the squared goes in here and that becomes a 9. X to the negative 10,
make sure you’re okay with that, we took 3 squared--that’s 3 times 3--but this one followed this
rule right there. So, we’re taking that times 5X to the seventh. So, 5 times 9 is 45, that wasn’t
tough. X to the seventh, X to the negative 10. We’re going to be up there at that top rule, so we
have 7 plus a negative 10, that’s a negative 3. Ooh, but what does that mean? Right there, this
rule right here, we get 45. This guy gets down on the bottom next to the third.