Thread: Surds (length of a side of a rhombus)

I tried Pythagora's theorem and I think I'm close to the answer, but I'm stuck at this point:

Sorry for the images, Latex is kind of confusing for me :s

Any help would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance.

Hello !

You are close to the answer. You have the same one, written in a different form, but you need some more work to get to their actual answer :



First, we need to put everything in absolute fraction form (otherwise things get confusing) :



Note that you can multiply everything by :



Then you can factor a out :



Simplifying the surds :



And finally, dividing by :



Does it make sense ?

Thank you very much!
If I use my original answer is it still considered to be a correct answer if I use it in, say, a test? Or would it be incorrect because it is not fully simplified?
Thanks.

Originally Posted by caramelcake

Thank you very much!
If I use my original answer is it still considered to be a correct answer if I use it in, say, a test? Or would it be incorrect because it is not fully simplified?
Thanks.

I believe you might lose some points depending on the context, but it wouldn't be penalized that much unless the question specifically asks for full simplification/factorization. But if you can factorize, do it (here there were two identical surds which sort of looks bad)

OK, thanks a lot for your input!

It was my pleasure.