One nice thing about this situation is that you’ve been given everything in the same base. To review a little on the laws of exponents, when you have two exponents with the same base being:
– Multiplied: Add their exponents – Divided: Subtract their exponents
We can see that in both the numerator and denominator we have exponents *multiplied* together, and the product in the numerator is being *divided* by the product in the detonator, so that translates to *summing the exponents on the top and bottom and then finding their difference*. Let’s throw away the twos for a moment and just focus on the exponents. We have
[11/2 + (-7) + (-5)] - [3 + 1/2 + (-10)]
For convenience’s sake, I’m going to turn 11/2 into the mixed number 5 1/2. Summing the terms in the first brackets gives us
5 1/2 + (-7) + (-5) = - 1 1/2 + (-5) = -6 1/2
And summing the terms in the second:
3 + 1/2 + (-10) = 3 1/2 + (-10) = -6 1/2
Putting those both into our first question gives us -6 1/2 - (-6 1/2), which is 0, since any number minus itself gives us 0.
Now we can bring the 2 back into the mix. The 0 we found is the exponent the 2 is being raised to, so our answer is
