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freeCodeCamp/guide/english/mathematics/simplifying-square-roots/index.md
KevinatorTrainer5 ad39f4a8d9 Equation symbol changes and formatting changes (#22049)
* Equation symbol changes and formatting changes

-Initially, SQRT(value) does not actually create a square root symbol, so I decided to use replace SQRT( ) with √ next to the number, which has successfully created the square root symbol to the left of the number.
-Given that the information of the article was unorganized through jumbled information, I decided to use the paragraph tag, <p>, to make the article have an organized structure.
-I also used the biggest headline tag, <h1>, to outline the topics of square roots 
-Given that '-----' was not an effective method of creating fractions, I decided to use the fraction slash tag, "&frasl;", the superscript element, <sup>, and the subscript element, <sub>, in order to create suitable fractions

* Removing unnecessary coding and editing content

-I just double checked this content, and realized that there were a couple of mistakes such as an extra heading, putting a square root as sqrt(3) instead of &radic;3, and adding unnecessary paragraph tags instead of extra spaces.
2018-11-17 20:53:17 -07:00

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Simplifying Square Roots

Simplifying Square Roots

Let's say you have the radical √363, and you need to simplify it into a both, simplest number, and a number that you can use in specific calculations, where we can do this by trying to find perfect squares within the radical.

So, it's a fact that:

√(x×y) = √x × √y

and this fact allows us to understand that we can seperate the √xy into two separate radicals, √x and √y.

But first, we need to find a factor of 363, that would allow us to pull a perfect square from it. Perfect square numbers include: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144 etc. ,as each of them can become a whole number if these numbers were square rooted.

Now, factors of 363 are: 1, 3, 11, 33, 121 and 363.

If you look, you can see that 121 is among that list, 121×3 is 363, and we can change the radical to show that:

√363 = √(121×3) = √121 × √3

And we can take the square root of 121, where we can turn it into a whole number:

= 11 × √3

Hence, 11√3 is the square root number of 363.

Simplifying Square roots in the Denominator:

Lets' say you have the expression:

2√5

And you wanted to simplify this by removing the radical from the denominator, well you can do this by multiplying this fraction by:

√5√5

Which is equal to one, and you get:

2√5 × √5√5

= 2√55

because a square root multiplied by itself is the number in the square, the denominator is now a whole number, not a radical anymore. The radical still exists in the top, but this is fine in most cases, as the value itself is still exact.

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