# Easy Way to Learn Exponents & Radicals in Math

By Marija Kero

An easy way to learn exponents and radicals in math is going to require you to study vocabulary. Find out about an easy way to learn exponents and radicals in math with help from an experienced mathematics professional in this free video clip.

### Transcript

Hi, my name is Marija, and today, I'm gonna give you an easy way to learn exponents and radicals in math. So, when dealing with exponents and radicals, there's some important vocab that we need to learn. So, if I had, let's say, two to the third power, the two, the big number here, is called my base, and the three, is of course, my exponent. And, what the exponent does is it tells the base how many times it's going to be multiplied by itself. The big thing to remember is never to multiply the exponent by the base, that's not what it means. So, this three tells me that I have to multiply the two, the base, by itself, three times. So, two to the third power is the same thing as two times two, times two, which is eight. So, you take the exponent, and whatever the base is, you multiply it by itself that many times, and that's how we get eight. Now, when dealing with radicals, we'll take this problem and do it backwards. If I have the cube root of eight, now, what this is telling me is it's asking me to find a number which when I multiply by itself three times, will give me eight. So, I'm looking for a number that when I multiply by itself, three times, will give me eight. And, because of the problem we just did before, of course, we know that number is going to be two. So, the cube root of eight is two. Now, if there was no number, here, where that three is, that would mean that I'm just looking for the square root, so that would mean that I'm looking for a number where I'm multiplying a number by itself just twice to get me back to eight. And, this number, of course, is not gonna be a whole number, so we'd have to estimate it. And, that is an easy way to do exponents and radicals.