This unit follows on from the "Powers and Square Roots" unit in the 'first and second years of secondary education' section. In this earlier unit we focused on whole base numbers raised to the power of a positive whole number and examined their properties. In this unit there was also an introduction to the concept of the square root.

This unit focuses on numbers raised to whole number and fractional indices and will generalise the rules which were examined in the earlier unit.

• To understand that a number raised to the power of a positive whole number is that number multiplied by itself as many times as the number of the index. 
• To understand numbers raised to whole numbers and rational numbers.
• To use these new examples to generalise the rules of indices.
• To understand that the root of any index is another way of expressing a power.