A cubic trinomial is a polynomial expression that consists of three terms where the highest degree of the variable is three. In its general form, a cubic trinomial can be written as:
ax³ + bx² + c
Here, a, b, and c are coefficients, and a cannot be zero (if a were zero, the term would no longer be cubic).
An example of a cubic trinomial is:
2x³ – 4x² + 3
In this example, 2x³ is the cubic term, -4x² is the quadratic term, and 3 is the constant term. The term ‘cubic’ refers to the degree of the highest power of the variable, while ‘trinomial’ indicates that there are three distinct terms in the expression. Understanding cubic trinomials is fundamental in algebra, particularly when solving equations, factoring, or graphing polynomial functions.