Totally Radical, Dude

Every surfer movie we've ever seen constantly has characters that use phrases like "gnarly waves," "surf's up," and "radical, dude." Lucky for you, after this chapter, you and surfers will have some of this exquisite vocab in common.

Okay, okay. Maybe you won't go around telling people their outfit today is totally gnarly, but at least you'll be able to use the word "radical" and know what it means. This chapter is all about powers, roots, and radicals. While you may have been able to gather that from the title, you may not have known that this means you'll be looking at exponent rules, properties of square roots, solving crazy exponential equations, and don't forget about graphing. We'll even introduce you to a gnarly new number, i. And yes, we just wrote the number i. So without further ado… surf's up!