For week 3  we  begin a unit on “Absolute Value and Radicals”. I had not known anything about it until now. The concept is about a digit value of a number from zero.  There is a formula that can be used. You take a square root of a square to get the absolute value.

Example: Take -6, -6 squared is 36 and the root of 36 is 6. so the absolute value of -6 is 6

We also learned about simplifying radical expressions. It is sort of complicated for me to understand as I never really understood it very well in grade 10.  To simplify an entire radical you take all the prime factors (2x2x2x2x3), and gather the groups of 2 as it is a square root. In my example there are 2 groups of 2’s and an extra 3. The groups are then multiplied together (2×2 = 4) and you just have the 3 left to slide into the answer.