Question

Explain how you know that -5 and 1/5 are multiplicative inverses.

Answer 1

-5(-1)=5
(5^-1)=1/5
to find multiplicacative inverses find negative reciprocal or, in other words, put to -1st power and multiply by -1.

Answer 2

Hey!

We know that if we see a number that apparently doesn't have a denominator, we can plug a "1" as a denominator because it's a whole number, for example, we could write.

`-5= -(5)/(1)`
Finding the inverse would be taking the reciprocal of it, that implies switching the fractions, the signs would change too, so, this would mean that the reciprocal of
`-(5)/(1)` would be,

`(1)/(5)`

Using Math, we can verify this is correct. To do that, we would have to use exponents.

`(1)/(5)^(-1) =5`

Thanks!
-TetraFish