Review of Square and Cubic Roots
We can use the exponent laws and patterns in tables to explain what happens when you have negative exponents. Exponent laws can also be applied with both positive and negative exponents.
Sometimes exponents can be non-integral values; they can be fractions and decimals. It is useful to think of decimal exponents as fractions, because fractional exponents can be thought of as roots.
The same exponent laws that apply to integral exponents, then, can also be applied to rational exponents. For this reason, it is sometimes useful to convert roots to exponents.
rational numbers - numbers that can be written as a fraction. Normally, we think of these as being decimal values or fractions
integral values - numbers that are integers (positive or negative, with no decimal value)