ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Powers and Exponents Videos 6 videos
Numbers have friends in high places: they're called powers. And yes, they are powerful. They can make a single digit number turn into a 10 digit nu...
Exponents desperately want to be like regular ol' numbers—so it figures they also want to be multiplied and divided.
Those itty-bitty exponents are difficult to read as it is. Now they're going to be even smaller—and include fractions? Someone had better get us...
Introduction to Exponents 16042 Views
Share It!
Description:
Numbers have friends in high places—they're called exponents.
Transcript
- 00:07
Exponents a la shmoop hi I'm opponent or at least I used to be.. [Number 2 giving a speech]
- 00:12
I was riding high and turning right enjoying life and walking on air, hanging
- 00:17
out with my good old buddy five, until an algebra student came along and ruined [young boy scribbling on paper]
- 00:21
everything. He simplified my butt right out of
- 00:23
existence I have many other exponent friends [Number 3 sat at a bar and number 8 wiping the bar]
Full Transcript
- 00:26
I was pretty simple compared to them, all I did was square my buddy five without
- 00:31
me he was just five but after I came along he was five times five. Or, put
- 00:36
another way himself times himself.. A few of my exponent friends did a lot more [Number 7 in class with other students]
- 00:41
than I did my homie 3, the exponent, cubed whatever number was hanging out with him.
- 00:46
In other words their number became itself times itself times itself. 2 cubed [Number 8 trapped inside a cube]
- 00:52
could become 8. 3 cubed could become 27.. and so on. We were in charge of creating
- 00:58
some awfully big numbers but it didn't stop there I had friends that could [Queen singing don't stop me now]
- 01:02
raise a number or base to a 4th power a 5th power or a 6th power....
- 01:06
I had one friend who could raise a number to a 38th power he didn't get a [Number 38 holding up number 2 above a skyscraper]
- 01:11
lot of work though. I also had some friends on the opposite end of the
- 01:14
spectrum, like how one raised numbers to the first power nice guy, but pretty
- 01:19
useless he tried real hard to be as cool as the [School kids with the number 1]
- 01:22
rest of us but he simply didn't affect his base numbers at all... And then there
- 01:26
was this goth loner who never spoke to any of us he would raise base numbers to [Number zero dressed as a goth]
- 01:31
the zeroth power and turn him into ones.. It was like he was turning them all into
- 01:35
zombies pretty scary yeah we had a lot of power [Number 1's turn into zombies in an alley]
- 01:38
back in the good old days I mean everyone could tell what our deal [Numbers 5, 6 and 2 playing poker]
- 01:41
was just by looking at us. Anyway, I no longer serve any purpose so now all I do
- 01:47
is float through mathematical purgatory waiting for some other number that [Number 6 waiting in a cue]
- 01:50
needs to be squared wait hold on I think I hear a number crying out for an
- 01:55
exponent, I'm on my way..Number in need exponent to the rescue let's hear it for [Number 2 flying in the air with a cape]
- 02:00
power ..power..power.
Related Videos
It's impressive that these expressions are able to stay so rational even when they're having operations performed on them.
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. But what happened when they got up there? They’ve been gone an awfully long time…
Sometimes, we just want fewer y's...or more x's. That's why it's great to know how to add and subtract variables. In real life, though, we try to a...