Answer:
Raising something to a negative exponent is just taking the reciprocal of the amount.
Step-by-step explanation:
Let's assume that you wanted to know what is.
To find it, you would take the reciprocal of the x amount. So becomes
.
This works because of the nature of exponents. Exponents represent the number of times you are multiplying a value by itself. So would be equal to a · a · a. To increase the exponent, you increase the number of times the value is multiplied by itself: To increase
to
, you would have to multiply a with
two more times (a · a · a · a · a). To decrease the exponent, you must divide the value by itself. So to decrease
to
, you would have to divide
by a 3 times.
If the exponent is 0, the value is equal to 1. But you can still decrease the exponent into negative numbers. You just divide 1 by a the desired amount of times: means that you are dividing 1 by a 3 times.
Hope this helps.
