I’m doing my GED and passed that math part but this never came up. I saw it on a meme and am lost.
Help!!??
In: 9770
Former math teacher here – there are very good answers in this thread but in truth they’re explaining it to you like you’re a college undergrad, not like you’re five lmao. So I will try to give a very very simple, fundamental explanation.
Basically – think about what exponents *are*. 2^4 is just 2x2x2x2. So think about how you make 2^4 into 2^3. You divide it, right? Just like you multiply the base number by itself to get a higher exponent, you perform the reverse operation to make a lower exponent.
So 2^1 is 2, that’s self-evident. You turn 2^1 into 2^0 in the exact same way you turn 2^4 into 2^3 – by dividing by 2. What’s 2/2? 1.
This is also why 2^-1 is 1/2, 2^-2 is 1/4, and so on.
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