At some point in our early math education, we’re told that anything to the power of zero evaluates to one. 1°=1 and 5°=1 and 99°=1. Basically, x°=1 for all x. It’s typically presented as just a rule about taking anything to the power of zero, but it’s actually derived from a more basic rule about exponents.

Thinking about x° in connection with something else recently, it occurred to me there’s a second way to justify the notion that anything to the power of zero is one.

It also occurred to me 0ⁿ might be an implementation of the Dirac delta.

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