Answer the following questions about the functions whose derivatives are given in Exercises 1–14: a. What are the critical points of ƒ? b. On what open intervals is ƒ increasing or decreasing? c. At what points, if any, does ƒ assume local maximum and minimum values?

The first answer is correct

First step is to get rid of the square root. remember that a square root is the same as raising to the (1/2) power. see below: multiply exponents per exponent rules to get: remember you subtract exponents from the denominator and add exponents in the numerator so: simplify further: so a is the correct choice. if you don't understand this google exponent rules and it will you understand. look at the image results.