What's the rule for raising a number to a negative exponent?

If something is raised to a neg power you simply swap it to the other side of the fraction line and change the neg sign to a pos sign.

 

Just be careful - only the terms with the neg power can be swapped to the other side :))

 

See if this helps.

http://web2.0calc.com/questions/indices-especially-negative-indices#r0

hmmmm,thx to the sneek peek torturey of 8th grade math and after scouting many 8th grade challenger bases, ive finally discovered the rule

Q:What's the rule for raising a number to a negative exponent?

A: It's the same rule for raising a number to a positive exponent, except, instead of whole numbers, you deal with fractions with negative exponents, and the numerators always 1 and the denomenator is always the positive exponent

for example

9^-1

9^1=9

but since its a fraction, its 1/9

lets say 3^-3

it is the same as 3*3*3=27, except becuz its fractions, its 1/27