This week we didn’t learn to much because we spent most of the week reviewing for our unit test, we did learn 1 thing that was very useful when doing the quadratic formula. This weeks lesson was called “Looking at the discriminant”… the discriminate is the part of the quadratic formula that is underneath the square root symbol (I have included a picture below). It basically means to be able to tell the difference between something, in this case, it determines the nature of the root. Determining the nature of the root is very useful because it will let us know what sort of numbers we are working with, and whether to continue doing the equation or to stop because there will be 0 roots.
Formula
Example for getting no roots:
1- 36
= -35
(no solutions, no real roots)
If the discriminate is equal to 0 -> there is 1 solution
If the discriminate is larger than 0 -> 2 real solutions
If the discriminate is smaller than 0 -> 0 solutions