Re: help with radical expressions

From: Porky Pig Jr (porky_pig_jr_at_my-deja.com)
Date: 10/15/04 

Date: 14 Oct 2004 18:39:02 -0700

rberlin@gmail.com (lauranalee) wrote in message news:<c86f8f85.0410141101.1439e43a@posting.google.com>...
> I'm brushing up on my precalculus before going back to school and I'm
> having trouble with the Radical Expressions section. (I've had this
> in high school and College Algebra, but they went over it so quickly I
> never got a good understanding and that was about 8 yrs ago.) Anyway,
> I do fine till I get to a problem like (4x+5)^3/2 or (2x-1)^-1/2.

If you have a problem understanding these expressions, the fractional
power a/b means b'th root of something taken to the a'th power. A
negative fractional power is 1 over whatever taken to that power with
a plus sign. So in your examples, we take (4x+5) to the 3rd power, and
then take a square root of the result. In the second example, it is 1
over square root of (2x-1). This should help you to work out the rest
on your own.

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