Hello, today I will be talking about exponents. Exponents are a way of working with numbers like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I will be talking about what they are, what they are used for, and some patterns that you may find helpful when calculating exponents. I hope you enjoy reading this.
So what are exponents? Exponents are repeated multiplication. For example, instead of doing 10x10x10x10, you could do 10^4. Basically, you take the first number and multiply it with itself however many times the second number tells you to. Another example is 8^5 which is 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 = . That way, you don’t have to write out long math problems.
But what are they used for? Exponents are used for making it easier to type out long multiplication problems. This helps so that instead of doing 6x6x6x6=1296, you can do 6^4=1296. The second way is much more efficient and easy to read! If there is a very long math equation and 4x4x4x4 is part of it, it can be confusing and mess you up when trying to solve the equation. Exponents help with that.
What are some patterns in them? The pattern in exponents is that if you do something like (3^5)x(3^3)=3^8. So (3^5)x(3^3) is the same thing as (3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3)x(3 x 3 x 3) which is also the same thing as 3^8. This is because you are multiplying the same number a certain amount of times. This makes it easier to calculate multiple exponents because you are able to combine them.
In this post I talked about exponents. Exponents are important because it allows you to write multiplication equations shorter and you are able to know what it means when you see ^ in an equation. My three body paragraphs were what exponents are, how they’re used, and the patterns to help you. I hope you liked reading this post.