Differentiate y = 3x^4 + 6x^3

There are two really simple steps we can use to be able to differentiate in a question like this. The first step is to multiply the number in the power by the number in front of the variable - in this case the 'x'. Looking at the first term we would multiply the '4' (in the power) by the '3' (in front of the x) to get 12. The second step is to subtract one from the number in the power to get the new power. So again, looking at the first term, we would subtract 1 from '4' to get the new power which is 3. Therefore, differentiating the first term gives us 12x³. We can then repeat these two steps for the next term in the equation (6x³) to give us 18x². We use the notation dy/dx to indicate that we have differentiated the equation so our final answer is dy/dx = 12x³ + 18x²