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Welcome to our Math lesson on Basic Operations with Surds, this is the fourth lesson of our suite of math lessons covering the topic of Surds, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional Math learning resources below this lesson.
We can make operations with surds in the same way as with all the other types of numbers. Let's explain them briefly.
We can add or subtract only like surds. Some surds apparently look different, but after a few operations, we can convert them into like surds. Let's consider an example to clarify this point.
Simplify the following expressions containing surds.
Multiplication and division of surds is nothing more but the applications of the first two properties of surds in the reverse direction (from end to start). The only restriction is that surds must have the same index. Mathematically, we have:
This operation is particularly useful when trying to take numbers out of roots. For example, in the expression
we can't do any operation in the actual condition. Hence, we write
We can use the same approach in division of surds as well. We can write the second property of surds in the reverse direction, i.e.
For example,
This method too, is used to solve or simplify an expression where it is not possible to make any operation or simplification of surds in the original form.
Write the following expressions in the simplest form.
We have
We have
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