Why does the constant disappear when differentiating a function?

We can think of the constant term in a function in terms of x, for example in x^2 + 3x + 2 as 2 being multiplied by x^0. Anything to the power of 0 is equal to one, so in our example we would have 2 * x^ 0 which is the same as 2 * 1 which is 2, but this trick allows every term to have x of a certain power. Differentiating first multiplies the power of the x term with the coefficient, then takes one away from the power- with the constant term, multiplying the coefficient, the 2, by 0, will cause the whole term to disappear before we get to the second step.

Answered by Abdullah P. Maths tutor

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