Math Is Fun Forum

miyazaki tezuka

Member

Registered: 2006-11-08

Posts: 2

addition of radicals

can someone please answer this?

1. the square root of ( 4 - x ) plus the square root of ( x + 4 )
2. square root of x squared minus 2x minus 3 plus the square root of x minus 3.
3. square root of x squared minus 1, plus square root of ( x + 1 )
4. x squared minus 16 plus square root of (x + 16)

thanks in advance! mwah!

Ricky

Moderator

Registered: 2005-12-04

Posts: 3,791

Re: addition of radicals

Typically what you want to do is square the whole thing, then when you're done simplifying, just take a square root.

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"In the real world, this would be a problem.  But in mathematics, we can just define a place where this problem doesn't exist.  So we'll go ahead and do that now..."

HallsofIvy

Guest

Re: addition of radicals

can someone please answer this?

1. the square root of ( 4 - x ) plus the square root of ( x + 4 )
2. square root of x squared minus 2x minus 3 plus the square root of x minus 3.
3. square root of x squared minus 1, plus square root of ( x + 1 )
4. x squared minus 16 plus square root of (x + 16)

thanks in advance! mwah!

In general there is no simple way of adding square roots.  Ricky showed an interesting way of combining the first into a single square root but I wouldn't consider it "simpler" than the original.