MaplePrimes - answers and comments on Question, Simplify powers of the same base.

besides displaying

Axel Vogt — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 02:11:54 Z

You mean

5^2 * 5^(1/2) = 5^t; 
solve(%, t);
                                 5/2

maybe ` `

Christopher2222 — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 04:43:01 Z

Same base you could turn the 5 into a symbol

`5`^2*`5`^(1/2);

5^5/2

sorry don't know how to do with the numeric 5

simplification

Joe Riel — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 05:27:24 Z

Note that Maple automatically simplifies 5^(5/2) to 25*5^(1/2).

Addendum

Given the above, the most useful thing you can do is to create ``(5)^(5/2). A rather pointless one-line procedure that does that is

y := 5^2 * 5^(1/2):
map(x->`if`(x::integer,ifactor(x),`if`(x::`^`,``(op(1,x))^op(2,x),x)),y);
                                       (5/2)
                                    (5)

The blank function (``) evaluates to its argument when expanded, thus

expand(%);
                                        1/2
                                    25 5

Not exactly.

Jarekkk — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 02:24:37 Z

Thank you for this possibility, however it would be nice if it could look like this:

some_simplifications(5^2 * 5^(1/2)) = 5^(5/2)

obstacle

Alejandro Jakubi — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 13:06:28 Z

This is another elementary example of the automatic simplification becoming an obstacle for symbolic computations under hand control. Interestingly, in Maxima, automatic simplification works the other way, by combining the factors as the OP wishes:

(%i2) 5^(1/2)*5^2
(%o2) 5^(5/2)

Moreover, in Maxima, automatic simplification can be disabled, in which case the terms are not combined:

(%i3) simp:false
(%i4) 5^(1/2)*5^2
(%o4) 5^(1/2)*5^2

I find that a better systen should have the option for disabling automatic simplification with suitable safeguards.

Thank you.

Jarekkk — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:23:10 Z

@Alejandro Jakubi Thank you for this comment. I think many users would like to be able to turn the automatic simplification off sometimes.