Question

A cubic polynomial is having a degree equal to:
(a) 1
(b) 2
(c) 3
(d) 4

Answer 1

Hint: The degree of a polynomial is represented as the highest power that a variable in the given polynomial can attain. We are asked to find the degree of the cubic polynomial so basically we have to find the highest power of the variable that a cubic polynomial can attain.

Complete step-by-step answer:
First of all we are going to write a cubic polynomial with variable “x”. We are representing the cubic polynomial as f(x).
$f\left( x \right)=a{{x}^{3}}+b{{x}^{2}}+cx+d$
The degree of any polynomial is the highest power of the variable in the given polynomial. In the above cubic polynomial you can see that the highest power of the variable “x” is 3.
From the above, the degree of the cubic polynomial is 3.
Hence, the correct option is (c),

Note: There are two points that you should keep in mind.
First point is that in the above solution we have chosen the polynomial in x, you can choose the variable as y or p or any variable in the polynomial. The answer is not determined by the variable.
Secondly, the cubic polynomial that we have shown above contains the terms ${{x}^{2}},x$ and a constant term. If you don’t write these terms in the cubic polynomial and only write ${{x}^{3}}$ then also the degree of the polynomial is 3.
There is a trick to remember the degree of the cubic polynomial is that the word “cubic” has derived from the word “cube” and we know that cube contains three dimensions length, breadth and height so we can remember from the word cube that cubic polynomial is of degree 3.