ShmoopTube

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Simplifying Radicals, a la Shmoop. Blossom the hippie misses the good ol' simple

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life. Everything nowadays is too complicated. ( Todd, maybe add more storyline here?)

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She wishes everything were simplified. So even though sometimes things like the inside

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of her computer shouldn't be simplified, she still does it.

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Thankfully though, on her math homework, when she sees the number root 54 scribbled on her

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homework, the instructions tell her to simplify it.

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In the case of radicals, simplifying means to find another expression with the same value,

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not to find a decimal approximation of the radical.

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We start by finding any two factors of 54, numbers that can divide 54 and leave a remainder

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of zero. Say...9 and 6. Then continue simplifying until we're only left with prime factors.

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We can factor 9 into 3 and 3...and 6 by 3 and 2. No one likes to be lonely...so let's

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pair up repeated numbers and take them out of the radical...3 and 3 pair up...and we're

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left with 3 and 2. Since they don't have any potential partners, we can just multiply the

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numbers back togetherÉ Éleaving us with 3 root 6.

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Ah..the simple life.

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