This week in Precalculus 11 I learned how to define and simplify radicals with variable radicands. An example of a radical that I learned how to simply and define is
The first step when dealing with a radical like this is to split up the coefficient so that you find a factor than can be square rooted. In this case I chose 16 and 2 as the square root of 16 is 4.
Then you can square root 16 which would bring out outside of the root. To deal with the variable, you can divide the exponent of the variable by the index of the radical, then move that outside of the root sign.
This will leave you with a mixed radical.
At this point you might think that you are done however, you must now define the variable. In this case the variable x can be any real number because you can multiply any number by itself 4 times.
