Question

How do you simplify `(-y^5)(y^2)`?

Answer 1

`-y^7`

Explanation:

We can factor out the negative to make things look a bit nicer for the simplification of exponents.

`-(y^5)(y^2)`

Recall that `x^ax^b=x^(a+b)`. In other words, when multiplying terms with the same base and different exponents, you can combine everything into one term and add the exponents.

Then, we have

`-(y^(5+2))=-y^7`