Directions: simply the expression.

i don’t know how to do this problem. can someone walk me through it?

This simplfies to

   



we have

   

we use a property of radicals. for positive numbers a and b:

   

applying this here:

   

we can work on the  √(98) part first.

prime factorize 98.
98 is divisible by 2. 98 divided by 2 is 49 so we can write

    98 = 2  · 49

but 49 is 7  · 7 so

    98 = 2  · 7  · 7 = 2  · 7²

this means we can rewrite as 

   

note that we can use another property (or the fact the square rooting a square gets rid of the square)

   

therefore, 
back to our original expression:

   
   
simplify  :

   

but  is always positive so we do not need the absolute value signs.

therefore back to the original equation

   



side note:

   

because the original expression, , is always positive. we need the absolute value signs to force the simplified expression to be positive.

but for
   
   

we can drop the absolute value signs because x² is always positive. keep this in mind when you're simplifying these radicals with variables.