Question 20180
Hello There:

From the looks of your post, I am guessing that you are supposed to simplify an expression that involves one monomial divided by another monomial.

a/a^4

This can be thought of as:

a/(a*a*a*a)

(The asterisks mean multiplication.)

The one "a" in the numerator cancels with one of the "a"s in the denominator.  This is because a/a = 1.

a/a^4 = 1/a^3

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12*m/(15*m)

This can be thought of as:

(12/15)*(m/m)

Of course, m/m = 1, so we have:

12/15

This fraction can be reduced because the numerator and denominator each contain a factor of 3.

12/15 = 4/5

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6*r/(15*r*s)

Again, the "r"s cancel because r/r = 1.

6/(15*s)

The fraction 6/15 can be reduced for the same reason as the last problem.

6/15 = 2/5

This leaves us with:

2/(5*s)

~ Mark