The concept of negative exponents

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To understand the negative exponents students need to understand the positive exponents. If there is the repeated multiplication of a number then we can use positive exponents to write it into shorter form. Please see my previous post on exponents for details.

Please note that Negative exponent has nothing to do with the positive or negative sign of the base but it ONLY FLIPS THE BASE. Now what I mean by flip the base?

Simple, "if you see a negative exponent (power) in the numerator then flip the base to the denominator and write the exponent as positive or if you see the negative exponent in the denominator then flip the base to the numerator and  write the exponent as positive".

Below is the full explanation of the concept. Please don't forget to download the pdf version of the lesson plan as the image below only shows the first page and in pdf there are two more pages.

Click for the PDF version

Below is the worksheet to practice the concepts learned from the above lesson.

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Answer Key