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Laws of Indices

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Surds Surds are basically an expression involving a root, squared or cubed etc...

There are some basic rules when dealing with surds

Also notice the special case

 



This is called the difference of two squares


 
  

When you have a fraction where both the nominator and denominator are surds, rationalising the surd is the

process of getting rid of the surd on the denominator.

To rationalise a surd you multiply top and bottom by fraction that equals one. Take the example shown below

To rationalise this multiply by effectively 1

Can you see why was chosen? This is because so the denominator becomes surd free.

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]or a more complex term

]irst of all, we need to get rid of the surd expression on the bottom, you should remember the difference of

two squares formula.

suppose a = 1 and b =

So to get rid of the denominator surd we multiply by like

so.

3³ ('3 cubed' or '3 to the power of 3') and 5² ('5 squared' or 5 'to the power' of 2) are example of numbers in index form.
3³ = 3×3×3
2¹ = 2
2² = 2×2
2³ = 2×2×2
etc.
The ² and ³ are known as indices. Indices are useful (for example theyallow us to represent numbers in standard form) and
have a number of properties.

Laws of Indices

There are several rules for dividing and multiplying numbers written in index form. These properties only hold, however,
when the same number is being raised to a certain power. For example, we cannot easily work out what 2³×5² is, whereas
we can simplify 3²×3³ .

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3hen we multiply together index numbers, we add the powers. So:

ya × yb = ya+b


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Further Index Propertiescccccînything to the power 0 is equal to 1. So 30 = 1, -8240 = 1 and x0 = 1. Negative Indices If you
have a number raised to a negative power, this is equal to 1 divided by the number raised to the power made positive. In
other words:
n-a = 1/na©
 -1 = 1/n. 3-2 = 1/32 = 1/9 (½)-3 = 23 = 8
     î fractional power means that you have
to take a root of the number. For example, 4½ means take the square root of 4 = 2. Similarly, x1/3 means take the cube root
of x.3e can use the rule (ya)b = ya×b to simplify complicated index expressions.
 (1/8)-1/3; = [(1/8)-1 ]1/3 = [8]1/3 = 2c
Inverse The inverse of something has the opposite effect of that thing. Suppose you multiply something by 2. Clearly the
"opposite effect" is to divide by 2.Similarly, if you raise a number x by a power b,the inverse of this would be to raise it by
the power of 1/b. This is because (xb)1/b = x1. So if we raise to the power of b and then to the power of 1/b, we end up
where we started. So raising to the power of 1/b must 'undo' what we did by raising to thepower of b. For example, the
inverse of cubing something is to take the cube root. If we do 23, we get 8. If we then cube root this, we get 81/3 =
2.eciprocals cccThe "reciprocal" of something means 1 over that something. So the reciprocal of y is 1/y =y-1 . The
important thing about reciprocals is that if you multiply a number together with its recipricol, you get 1. So 1/y × y = 1. T he
reciprocal of 1/2 is 2 because ½ × 2 = 1.
Every number has a reciprocal except zero. Zero doesn't have a reciprocal because you are not allowed to divide by zero, so
we can't work out 1/0. y-1 is sometimes pronounced "y inverse", because multiplying by 1/y is the inverse (opposite) of
multiplying by y.c