Then until you get used to cubes and higher exponents just get rid of all exponents first and writeas and as , etc. Also break into a product of primes and write it as as So, . becomes . Indicate the multiplication of the numerators and the denominators so that you only have one fraction: Now cancel: So all that's left is and we write as and end up with This method will always work, and you can use it until you can see that it's quicker just to subtract the exponents, which would amount to subtracting the number of 's or 's which would cancel in the mathod shown above. Edwin