(-1) Raised to an Exponent

Narrator: We are asked to evaluate the following expression so we have negative 5 in parentheses raised to the third power and if we remember from the video we can write that as -1 raised to the third power times 5 raised to the third power. And when we get to this point [(-13)] there’s our rule have to determine if this is going to be negative or positive. So if we come over here we can write our rule. Remember that we have negative 1 when it’s raised to some exponent X that is going to equal a positive 1 when our exponent is even and negative 1 when exponent is odd. So using this rule we can come up here and we can look at our negative 1 and we can see that it’s raised to an odd exponent and so when X is odd, when our exponent is odd, we’re going to be left with a negative 1. So we have negative 1 times 5 to the third power. 5 times 5 is 25 times 5 more is 125. Ok and you can use a calculator as well if you need to, that’s ok. But we have 125 times a negative 1 which leaves us with a negative 125.

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