The purpose of this lesson is to review concepts regarding whole number exponents and to introduce the base (of an exponent) as the factor that is multiplied repeatedly. In a previous course, students learned that an exponent tells how many factors of the base to multiply. 

In this lesson, students make sense of problems presented in a new way (MP1). They are introduced to the idea that repeated division by a number can be thought of as repeated multiplication by the reciprocal of that number, which plays a key role in later work with negative exponents.