Me again

[ronnie]

Still working on reviewing Algebra. Since the help here is so good, I thought I'd come back for more. My problem:

Simplify: (x^a)(y^a/3)(y^-2) and all of that divided by x^q/2.

Its like a really big fraction. I don't even know where to start.

And there is one more...

 

[stapel]

I'm going to guess that you have the following:

. . . . .[x^a(y^a/3)y^-2] / [x^q/2]

One step would be to combine things into neater fractions, which you can then flip-n-multipl:

. . . . .[(x^ay^a-2)/3] / [x^q/2]

. . . . .[(x^ay^a-2)/3] × [2/x^q]

Since you have no way of knowing what the values for the variables might be, I'd just combine as best you can, so you'll get an "a - q" power on the x in the numerator, with just a "3" left in the denominator after multiplying. Without knowing what the powers actually are, I don't know if this is what the book is looking for in the way of "simplifying" or not, though.

Eliz.