I refuse to help with a problem as trivial as that. They should be perfectly capable of finding on their own any one of the 4 a:s in the picture they posted.
Alright, education time needed!
I’m a fair few years out from my entry level uni maths module, so:
In between the second and third step of the solution, why is 1a / 2√a = 6
not evaluating as
a/√a = 12 ?
It does, he just didn’t show that a/√a simplifies to √a. There are a couple ways to think about it, but the simplest is if you just wanna get rid of the square root in the denominator, you can multiply the entire left side by (√a/√a) which gives you a√a / √a√a. This then turns into a√a/a. From there you get to just √a
Fucking hell, thank you. I thought I was going quite mad - I’d just taken a detour in solving it instead.
Cheers friend!
a = (√a)^2 = √a √a
Then you have (√a √a) /(2 √a) = 6 and can cross out one √a and multiply by 2 to get √a = 12
The second guy fucked up on the second step.
Would fail at hide and seek - https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/756624c5-b684-4d31-8278-982d22f6bcb9.webp
3a / 6a√a = Ia / 2a√a
Fucking Ia?
This is absurd. It says find “a” but which “a”? There are more than one. In American “math” there can only be one “a”. In British “maths” it looks like there can be more than one “a”, so it depends on where you are from.
This makes American math much more difficult, as the first mathematicians used up all 26 letters in 1970, shortly after the invention of math.
Little known math fact: Greek letters are in fact not real letters. They’re just random squiggles mathematicians come up with as notation because some asshole has already used up the other squiggles.
I have learned from StackOverflow that we should always ask if this is homework. Otherwise, the solution appears fine.
1a
