Collier's New Encyclopedia

A complete general encyclopedia of 1921 — the world as it was understood just after the Great War, from Aachen to Zwingli, across twelve volumes and six thousand pages.

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Square Root

in mathematics, a quantity which, being taken twice as a factor, will produce the given quantity.

Thus, the square root of 25 is 5, because 5×5=25; so also 2-3 is the square root of, since; x² is the square root of x, x², since x² Xx²=x²; a+x is the square root of a²+2ax+x², and so on. When the square root of a number can be expressed in exact parts of 1, that number is a perfect square, and the indicated square root is said to be commensurable. All other indicated square roots are incommensurable.

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