Question

Another way to write a^-n is to take its ____ and change the sign of its exponent.

Answer 1

To rewrite a^-n, you take its reciprocal 1/a^n, changing the negative exponent to a positive.

Step-by-step explanation:

Another way to write a^-n is to take its reciprocal and change the sign of its exponent. This means that you can express a^-n as 1/a^n because negative exponents indicate that the base, in this case, 'a', should be placed in the denominator with the exponent made positive. For example, 3^-4 becomes 1/3^4 when we apply this rule. This highlights that negative exponents perform an inverse function similar to how subtraction undoes addition or how division undoes multiplication.