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Fractional Exponents

By the way, there's kind of a cool way to pop this guy without a calculator.  (Hey, it you're stranded on a desert island and the professor isn't there to make you a calculator out of coconuts and salt water...  )

16^(3/4) We can rewrite the 16 as a 4th power ... 16^(3/4) = ( 2^4 )^(3/4) = 2^( 4 * (3/4) ) = 2^3 = 8

Eh.  Not that useful...  But, if you don't have anything to do on a Saturday night...
 

TRY IT:

Pop this without a calculator:  9^(5/2)

You can use this new notation to help you deal with messy radical problems.

Check it out:

the 4th root of ( ( 2(x^(-1))(w^5) ) / ( 32(x^7)(w) ) = w / ( 2x^2 )