Question from Manhattan PREP 5lb

[Tejas]

Hello everyone!
This question is from Chapter 14, Exponents and Roots, question 5.

Does anyone think x can also be negative? And we can use the exponent’s rule. Therefore, the answer would be cannot be determined. This makes sense to me if x=-1, then 80/2^-1 = 80/(1/2). This makes sense because we can divide 80 by 0.5.

[cylverixxx]

By definition, 80 is divisible by an integer m if there exists an integer k such that 80 = mk.

@Tejas

Does anyone think x can also be negative? And we can use the exponent’s rule.

2^a where a is a negative integer doesn’t give you an integer, right? So yeah, there’s your reasoning for why negative x’s don’t work.