Laws of Logarithms

Directions: The laws of logarithms are powerful problem-solving tools. This collection of exercises
should help make those laws part of your “mathematical muscle memory.” Answers will be posted
after section 8 meets on Thursday (if you are in section 7 and want to see them sooner, send me a
request by email).

1) Use the Product, Quotient, and Power Laws to write each of the following expressions as a single
logarithm.

1 1
a) log 4 x 2  3log 4 x  4 log 4 y b) 2 log xy  log  log
x y

1  1 
 
c) ln x  ln  x  1  ln x 2  1 d)
1
3
 
ln x 2  y 2  ln  3

x  y  ln  
3  x y

2) If log a 2  0.77 , log a 3  1.23 , and log a 5  1.80 , evaluate each of the following:

2
a) log a 15 b) log a
3

3
c) log a 25 d) log a 40

(Continued on back…)
3) If log x  a and log y  b , express each of the following expression in terms of a and/or b.

 x2 
Example: log 
 y 
 log  x 2   log  y   2 log x  12 log y  2a  12 b
 

 y2 
a) log  x3 y 1   log  
 x

  x 3
4
b) log 3 2
x y  2 log  
 y

log  x 2   1
c) log  x   log  
   x