hello my name is Kaeleigh and welcome to the video about exponents exponents are
another type of math operation you're already familiar with the core forms of
math which are addition subtraction multiplication and division exponents
tell us to do something in particular to a number and they're written quite
uniquely let me show you what I mean
let's think about how we learned what multiplication is all about for example
3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3 can be written more simply as 3 times 4 and just like
that if we have 3 times 3 times 3 times 3 we can use exponents to write it as 3
to the 4th power so what number do we get if we multiply three four times with
itself or 3 to the fourth power but be super careful 3 to the fourth power is
not the same as three times for this example three is the base and this time
4 written above and to the right of the number is exponent or the power we
say that we are raising 3 to the exponent or power of 4 we can also say 3
to the fourth we get the answer by multiplying 3 to itself as many times as
the exponent our exponent is 4 so we multiply 3 times itself 4 times 3 times
3 times 3 times 3
which gives us 81 as the answer because 3 times 3 is 9 9 times 3 is 27 and 27
times 3 is 81 the base and exponents change any number can be the base and
any number can be the exponent however there are some tricky exponents to
remember for instance 1 the exponent is 1 the answer is just the base 3 to the
first power equals 3 when the exponent is 0 the answer is always 1 look at
these examples 3 to the 0 power equals 1 6 to the 0
power equals 1 10 to the 0 power equals 1 and 2,500 to the 0 power equals 1 here
are a few more examples of raising a number to an exponent we read this as 4
to the power of 2 but whenever there is a power of 2 we can also say it is
squared so we can read this as 4 squared
to solve this you can ask yourself what is 4 times 4 the answer is 16
let's solve one final problem together we read this as 10 to the power of 4 and
you can ask yourself what is 10 times 10 times 10 times 10 well 10 times 10 is
100
so the answer is 10,000 but I'll let you in on a little trick there's a really
easy way to show 10 to a power all you do is just add zeros to the end so if
the exponent tells you how many zeros you need in this example you have 4
zeros to add because it was 10 to the 4th power
so 10 with 4 zeros is 10,000 look at how powerful you are now that you know all
about powers or exponents practice raising numbers to different exponents
on our fun online games and remember to always be clever