Q. Assuming x and y are both positive, write the following expression in simplest radical form.227x3y4Answer:
Break down radicand: Break down the radicand into prime factors and perfect squares.We have the expression 227x3y4. Let's first focus on the radicand (the number inside the square root), which is 27x3y4. We can break down 27 into its prime factors and express x3 and y4 in a way that will help us simplify the square root.27=33x3 can be written as x2×x, where x2 is a perfect square.y4 is already a perfect square since 27x3y40.
Simplify using perfect squares: Simplify the square root using the perfect squares.Now we can rewrite the radicand using the perfect squares we identified:27x3y4=(33)(x2⋅x)(y4)Since we know that a2=a, we can take out the perfect squares from under the square root:27x3y4=(32⋅3)(x2)(y2)2=9⋅3⋅x2⋅y4=9⋅3⋅x2⋅y4=3⋅3⋅x⋅y2
Multiply by coefficient: Multiply the simplified square root by the coefficient outside the square root. We now have the simplified square root, which we need to multiply by the coefficient 2 that is outside the square root in the original expression: 2×(3×3×x×y2)=6×3×x×y2
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