Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Radicands and Variables


How quickly I forget. If I had one homeschooling wish concerning my memory it would be remembering algebra. Now this is from someone who did NOT learn algebra in high school. In fact I didn't learn much of anything in high school. And that really upsets me now as a homeschooling mom. I thank God for my elementary and junior high years though; I received an excellent education there.

Why all this rambling about my past educational experiences? The reason is simple (as least to me). One of my children is doing square roots and we have an integer and a variable under the radical sign. Now I can do stuff like x+8=10 or even more complicated problems. But when you give me x+5 = 2x-3 and both of them under the radical sign I completely forget everything I ever knew. I know simple square roots, but no variables please. And I have a teacher's manual that only has the answers and not the SOLUTIONS~! If I were paranoid I would think someone was out to get me this week. But since I'm not I'll be doing some algebra homework today.

Oh, did I forget to mention that every positive number has two square roots, one positive and one negative? And is there a radical sign on this keyboard???

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