What is a square root and how do we undo squaring?
Square's Undo Button
What is a square root and how do we undo squaring?
Some math operations love to make things bigger. Squaring is one of them. You take a number, multiply it by itself, and watch it balloon. Five becomes twenty-five. Squaring is the show-off of the math world.
Why "square," though? Picture building a perfectly square patch of garden, three tiles across and three tiles down. Count the tiles: nine. The side is 3, the whole square is 3 times 3, which is 9. That's why multiplying a number by itself is called squaring — you're filling in a square.
