# Logarithms, Part 4

Let’s do another example using logarithms. As seen in my last post, logarithms are useful when the unknown variable in an equation is in the exponent of some number. But the exponent can be more than just the unknown – it can be an expression with an unknown. Consider the following problem:

${10}^{{3}{x}{+}{7}}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}{125}$

So the first step, as seen last time, is to take the log of both sides of the equation. We then can use the property of logs that was introduced: ${\log}_{a}{b}^{x}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}{x}\hspace{0.33em}{\log}_{a}{b}$

So let’s again use the base 10 log, the log x key on your calculator:

$\begin{array}{l} {{10}^{{3}{x}{+}{7}}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}{125}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\Longrightarrow\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\log{(}{10}^{{3}{x}{+}{7}}{)}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}\log{(}{125}{)}}\\ {\Longrightarrow\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}{(}{3}{x}\hspace{0.33em}{+}\hspace{0.33em}{7}{)}\log{10}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}{2}{.}{0969}} \end{array}$

Now let’s stop here. The log of 125 is done on your calculator. What about the log of 10? Well that can be done on your calculator as well, but if you’ve been paying attention, you can see that the answer is 1. 1 is the exponent of 10 to make 10? = 10. So now we have a standard (non-exponential) equation:

${3}{x}\hspace{0.33em}{+}\hspace{0.33em}{7}\hspace{0.33em}{=}\hspace{0.33em}{2}{.}{0969}$

We have solved equations like this before, so without going into the detail, the solution to this is x = -1.6344. You can put this value of x in the left side of the original equation and find that it does solve it.

In my next post, I will present another property of logs and use it to solve a population problem.