My greatest mistake this week was rationalizing radicals. I was making the mistake of multiplying on the numerator, while I was supposed to multiplying the both the numerator and denominator, this way you get rid of the irrational number on the bottom
Example 1:
With this question, I made the mistake of multiplying the top by denominator but not the bottom
What I should have done is multiplying both the numerator and the denominator by 5 over root 3
Now the denominator is a rational number
Example 2:
With this question I made the same mistake, by only multiplying the top by root 3 – 4
But what your supposed to do is multiply both root 3 -4
From here you foil across on both top and bottom
which ends up with the answer
Knowing how to rationalize radicals is important, since you don’t want the denominator the be an irrational number. Using this you can convert the it into a rational number.