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Urgent - Exponential notation
Okay I have to Express 140 (also 300) as a product of its prime factors using exponential notation, but I have no idea what it means so would one of you lovely people help me out?
Let's take 140 as an example. To find its prime factors we firstly divide it by 2 until it won't divide any further, then by 3, then by 5, then by 7, ... . We find that 2 divides twice with 35 as quotient, then 5 once with 7 as quotient, then 7 once with 1 as quotient; so stop. We have 140 = 2 x 2 x 5 x 7. The exponential notation says that if a number p occurs more than once in a repeated product, say t times, instead of writing p x p x ... x p (t times), you write p^t, which is keyboard for p with t written superscript (above and to the right). So 140 = 2^2 x 5 x 7. You could write 5^1 and 7^1 here, since 5 occurs 1 time and 7 occurs 1 time, but that would not save any ink. Simpler examples: 12 = 2^2 x 3; 100 = 2^2 x 5^2; 432 = 2^4 x 3^3.
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