# Derivative an exponential function with base 10 in Wolfram|Alpha

Posted 27 days ago
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 I've long struggled with Wolfram|Alpha's interpreter, but today it's annoyed me particularly much, so I want to know how to trick it into giving me what I want. At the moment, I'm trying to differentiate a function. One step in doing this is finding $\frac{\partial}{\partial x} 10^{0.4x}$, which if I try in Wolfram|Alpha gives: $$\frac{\partial}{\partial x} 10^{0.4x} = 0.921034e^{0.921034x}\tag{1}$$ which is less than helpful, because I want it with base-10. A much more useful output would be: $$\frac{\partial}{\partial x} 10^{0.4x} = \ln{(10^{0.4})}10^{0.4x}\tag{2}$$ No matter what I try, though, I can't get it to output anything like Equation 2. Trying "d/dx 10^(0.4*x) without E" just ignores the last part, and trying "derivative of 10^(0.4*x) as a power of 10" adds a as a second variable! It's very frustrating that Wolfram|Alpha seems to ignore my (I think rather simple) instructions, which as I said is a long-standing issue I've had. What sort of commands do I need to input to trick Wolfram|Alpha into doing what I want it to?