Question

How do you factor the trinomial `c^6 + c^5 - 156c^4`?

Answer 1

One way is to take out a common factor of `c^4`, to yield:

`(c^4)(c^2+c-156)`

Now the second part is a quadratic, and we know how to factorise those. We end up with:

`(c^4)(c+13)(c-12)`