Learn About Positive Exponents | Caddell Prep Online | Video Lesson

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In this video, we are going to look at how to simplify numbers raised to positive exponents. After you finish this lesson, view all of our Algebra 1 lessons and practice problems.

For example:
To simplify the following:
$2^4$
we have to multiply the 2 by itself, 4 times which would simplify to:
$2 \times 2 \times 2 \times 2=16$

Other examples:

$x^3=x \times x \times x$

$3^4=3 \times 3 \times 3 \times 3=81$

Examples of Positive Exponents

Example 1

$6^4$

We have to multiply $6$ four times.

$6^4=6 \times 6 \times 6\times 6=1,296$

Example 2

$11^2$

We have to multiply $11$ two times.

$11^2=11 \times 11=121$

Video-Lesson Transcript

This is a quick lesson on positive exponents.

Let’s look at an example.

$2^4$

$2$ is known as the base and the $4$ is the exponent

This means that we’re going to multiply the base by itself by the number of the exponent.

So $2^4 = 2 \times 2 \times 2 \times 2$

Our final answer is $16$ .

$2^4$ is $2$ multiplied $4$ times.

$2^4$ is not the same as $2 \times 4$ .

What if we have $3^4$ ?

This means we’re going to multiply $3$ $4$ times.

$3^4 = 3 \times 3 \times 3 \times 3 = 81$

If we have $4^3$ this is $4$ multiplied $3$ times.

$4^3 = 4 \times 4 \times 4 = 64$

So we have to multiply the base by itself. The number of times you do it is what the exponent stands for.

If you see a term or variable raised to an exponent such as $x^5$ .

This only means that we have $x$ multiplied by itself $5$ times.

$x^5 = x \times x \times x \times x \times x$

Just to review, we have the base and the small number at the top is the exponent.