You can put this solution on YOUR website! Your problem is:
The negative exponent means that the term raised to that negative value can be changed
into a fraction having 1 as the numerator and the term with a positive exponent as the
denominator. Easier to show by an example than to explain it.
Think "I can change into by making the denominator
of a fraction that has 1 as its numerator." When you do that your problem becomes:
Then you can eliminate the denominator if you multiply both sides by
If you do that multiplication on the left side you have a fraction that has
in both the numerator and denominator. This is equivalent to 1. On the right side the multiplication results in and the problem becomes:
Dividing both sides by 9 gives:
Now just take the square root of both sides. Notice that because . Also notice that both the positive and negative forms
of are needed because when either is squared they produce a positive value
of
The two answers to this problem are:
and
You can check this by putting each of these answers (positive and negative) one at a time
into the equation:
and see that with these values the left side of the equation equals 9.
(