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Jaclyn estimates the square root of 50 in the following way:

√200 = 2√100 = 2 (10) = 20
(a) Explain why her reasoning is incorrect.

(b) Estimate the square root of 200 to the nearest tenth without using your calculator. Show your work.

1 Answer

1 vote

Hello!

The answer is:

a) Her reasoning is incorrect, she applied a wrong operation, the way to simplify the expression was using the square root property. If we want to extract a number of a square root, we must square that number first in order not to modify the expression.

b) We have that:


√(200)=14.14

and rounding to the nearest tenth, we have that:


√(200)=14.1

Why?

To solve the problem, we need to remember the following property of square roots:


√(ab)=√(a)*√(b)

We are given the expression:


√(200)

We can rewrite it by the following way:


√(100*2)

Now, applying the square root property we have:


√(100*2)=√(100)*√(2)=10√(2)=14.14

Therefore,

a) Her reasoning was wrong, she applied a wrong operation, the way to simplify the expression was using the square root property. If we want to extract a number of a square root, we must square that number first in order not to modify the expression.

b) We have that:


√(200)=14.14

and rounding to the nearest tenth, we have that:


√(200)=14.1

Have a nice day!

User Den Kison
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