Can You Distribute an Exponent?

It's legal to distribute exponents over multiplication and division. That's 100% legal. But it's illegal to distribute an exponent over addition and subtraction. So that line, that's just the distributive law.

When can you distribute an exponent into parentheses?

Distributing Exponents (Power Rule) : Example Question #4

Explanation: An exponent outside of a parentheses needs to be distributed to all the numbers and variables in the parentheses. An exponent raised to an exponent should be multiplied.

Can you do the distributive property with exponents?

Distributive property with exponents

An exponent is a shorthand notation indicating how many times a number is multiplied by itself. When parentheses and exponents are involved, using the distributive property can make simplifying the expression much easier.