Expanding brackets

Expanding brackets is when we have an expression, for example, 5(4x+3), and we want to ‘remove’ the brackets by multiplying out the terms inside the brackets.

You may also hear this as multiplying polynomials. Polynomials are just expressions with multiple terms, like 4x + 3 or x^2 - 2x + 1, and they’re being multiplied together when we expand brackets.

The grid method

The most visual way to expand brackets is to use the grid method. This is where we draw a grid to help us multiply each term inside the brackets by the term(s) outside the brackets.

Examples

See these pages for examples:

• Expanding single brackets
• Expanding double brackets
• Expanding triple brackets