So I have a quick question on factoring when something is to a power other than 2 or 3. I've got this problem:
$a^4-16$ and I think that I should use the difference of squares so that I would get:
$(a^2-2)(a^2+2)$
but I'm not real sure where to go from there. Would I simply leave my answer as that or would I continue to factor on down?
It's a part of this problem:
$$\frac{\frac{5a^2+14a+8}{a^4-16}}{\frac{25a^2+40a+16}{a^2-2a}}$$
Actually $a^4-16=(a^2+4)(a^2-4)=(a^2+4)(a+2)(a-2)$.