Tutoring high school math, you work with radicals.  The tutor discusses simplifying fractions with radicals.

I’ve written several articles about working with radicals; you’ll find them by keying “radicals” in the search box. Ones that might be helpful towards this one are here, here, and here.

Example: Simplify √(28)/√(32)

Solution: First, we use the rule

√(a)/√(b)=√(a/b)

which leads, in our case to

√(28/32)

Now, the fraction can be reduced on the inside:

√(28/32)=√(7/8)

Now we can back out again:

√(7/8)=√(7)/√(8)

Now, from my article Simplifying Radicals…part 1, we know that

√(8)=√(4)√(2)=2√(2)

So we have

√(7)/√(8)=√(7)/(2√(2))

Next, the denominator needs to be rationalized (see my article here):

√(7)/(2√(2))*√(2)/√(2)

=(√(7)*√(2))/(2√(2)√(2))

=√(14)/4

Apparently, √(28)/√(32) simplifies to √(14)/4

Radicals are posed in seemingly endless combinations during high school math. They are part of the daily diet in calculus as well. Therefore, I’ll be exploring further examples with radicals in future posts:)

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.