How do you simplify sqrt(15/36)?

1 Answer
George C.
May 3, 2017

sqrt(15/36) = sqrt(15)/6

Explanation:

Here are a couple of identities we will use:

If a >= 0 and b > 0 then:

sqrt(a/b) = sqrt(a)/sqrt(b)

If a >= 0 then:

sqrt(a^2) = a

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Example

When given sqrt(15/36) to simplify, you could simplify 15/36 first, split the square root, then rationalise the denominator, but that would be missing out on the fact that 36=6^2 is already a perfect square.

Instead, we can proceed as follows:

sqrt(15/36) = sqrt(15/6^2) = sqrt(15)/sqrt(6^2) = sqrt(15)/6

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