Thread: factor radicals

(a²+1)²-7(a²+1)+10

ans = Its wrong I tried a⁴-1+7a²+16

Originally Posted by zbest1966

(a²+1)²-7(a²+1)+10

There are no radicals here. Did you make a mistake when typing the problem?

Anyway, this is a quadratic in form. Let . Then

.

Now factor that trinomial on the right, and then substitute for to get everything back in terms of .

a^4 + 1-7a^2-7+10

a^4-6-7a^2+10

a^4-7a^2+4

Im stuck

Originally Posted by zbest1966

a^4 + 1-7a^2-7+10
...
Im stuck

Did you not read what I wrote? We have a quadratic in . You don't need to multiply everything out. And if you were to multiply everything out, you're doing it wrong: .

I've shown you how to reduce the problem to factoring . Can you factor this trinomial?