What do money in a savings account, the population of the world, and radioactive waste all have in common? You can use exponential functions to describe them and predict the future. Exponential relationships are widely used by scientists, business people, and even politicians trying to predict budget surpluses and deficits.

In this chapter you will: build on your knowledge of quadratic equations and functions learned in Chapter 7 learn to find exponential growth and decay use equations to solve real-world problems learn to use zero and negative exponents use scientific notation to express numbers that are very large and very small learn about the multiplication and division properties of exponents