Understand Negative Indices

What are negative indices?

They are numbers or terms with a negative index which means they can be written as a reciprocal of that number. 

For example:

And:

How do we get negative indices?

Negative indices occur when multiplying or dividing two terms where the the result of adding or subtracting the powers gives a negative value.

For example:

a³ x a^-5 = a^{3 + - 5} =  a^-2 = 1/a²

or

p¹ ÷ p² = p^{1 - 2} = p^-1 = 1/p

Does that make sense?

Let's have a go at some questions. If you need to check back to this introduction, just click on the red button on the right of the screen.