B. Radicals

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B. Radicals

A radical is made up of the following components:

Radical In algebra, «math style=¨font-family:`Times New Roman`¨ xmlns=¨http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML¨»«mroot»«mi»a«/mi»«mi»n«/mi»«/mroot»«/math» indicates the nth root of a quantity a is being taken,where a is the radicand. Radicand the number under the root sign Index indicates the type of root to be taken

Consider the relationship between a power and a radical.

Example 1

The index 2 is not generally written because √ is assumed to be the square root, . Let a = 16 and n = 2 in the general radical form . Evaluate .

From the previous example, note the index value of 2 also represents the exponent when written in exponential form 4 ² = 16.

As such, when the n^th root of a generates a value, this same value, when multiplied by itself n times, will yield the radicand, a.