How to Simplify Square Roots in 3 Easy Steps

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A Simple Guide for how to find Square Roots

The square root of a number is a number that when multiplied by itself, gives an original number. Square roots are also the inverse operation of squaring a number. Squaring a number means you multiply that number by itself. The square root of a number is the number that gives an square when multiplied by itself. You can download our simplify square root worksheet for more practice on how to simplify a square root.

Common Core Standard: 8.EE.A.2

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A Guide for Simplifying any Square Roots Example

In order to solve how to simplify roots you must find a specific number. The square root of a number is any number that is multiplied by itself to get an original number. You can simplify square roots by doing the opposite operation of squaring a number. That means to go from a square root to the original number you just have to square the root. This is the process for how to simplify a square root.

3 Quick Steps for using Square Roots Rules

A square root is denoted by a radical symbol.
When simplifying square roots, you are looking for the number is can be multiplied by itself to get an original number.
When you find that number, that number is the square root.

Watch the Simplifying Square Roots Video Explanation

Watch our free video on how to find Square Roots. This video shows how to solve problems that are on our free How to Simplify Square Roots worksheet that you can get by submitting your email above.

Watch the free Simplifying Square Roots video on YouTube here: How to Simplify Square Roots

Video Transcript:

This video is about how to simplify square roots. You can get the worksheet we use in this video for free by clicking on the link in the description below.

We’re talking about how to simplify square roots. You have to know what a square root is. A square root is another way of saying what number, times itself, takes us back to an original number. Another way of thinking about this is to use actual numbers. This will show you how to solve square roots. You can download our simplifying square roots worksheets for more practice.

If we wanted to find the square root of, let’s say 9. what we would need to find is what number times itself would get us back to our original number, which in this case was 9. There is only one number that when you multiply times itself will get us back to 9, in this case the number is 3. The square root of 9 is 3 because 3 times 3 equals 9.

Another important thing to mention is this symbol. This symbol denotes when you are finding the square root of a number. The symbol is called the radical symbol. Anytime you see the radical sign with a number under it what that means is you are looking for the square root of that number. If you see the radical sign and then 16 under it, what that’s saying is you need to find the square root of 16, or in other words you need to find the number that when multiplied times itself gets us back to 16. In this case it would be 4 because 4 times 4 equals 16.

The last thing I want to mention is something called perfect squares. A perfect square is when you take the square root of a number and the root is a whole number. The square root of 100 for example is a perfect square because the answer is 10. However the square root of 56 is not a perfect square because it’s answer is 7.48. The square root of 100 is 10 which is a whole number, which makes it a perfect square and then the square root of 56 is 7.48 which is not a whole number and is not a perfect square.

Let’s jump down to a couple example problems to show you how to simplify square roots. When simplifying number four it says find the square root of 64. What you are looking for is what number times itself will get us back to 64. In this case the square root of 64 would be 8 because 8 times 8 equals 64. Our answer is going to be 8. Number five gives us a square root of 16. You have to think what number times itself gives us 16. 4 times 4 is 16 so the square root of 16 is equal to 4.

The last two examples of how the simplify square roots were going to show you is number 9 and number 10. Number 9 says find the square root of 36. Well the square root of 36 is going to be 6 because 6 times 6 is 36. Number 10 says find the square root of 4. The square root of 4 has to be 2 because 2 times 2 is 4.