Concept

Adding and Subtracting Square Roots that Need Simplification

When adding or subtracting square roots, the terms may not initially appear to be like radicals — their radicands look different. However, after simplifying each square root by removing the largest perfect-square factor, the simplified forms may reveal like radicals that can then be combined.

The general strategy has two stages:

  1. Simplify each radical by factoring out the largest perfect square from the radicand and applying the Product Property.
  2. Combine like radicals by adding or subtracting their coefficients, just as one combines like terms in algebra.

When a radical already has a numerical coefficient — for example, 5185\sqrt{18} — simplifying the radical produces a product of three factors (such as 5325 \cdot 3 \cdot \sqrt{2}). The Associative Property of Multiplication allows these numerical factors to be multiplied together first, yielding a single coefficient in front of the radical (15215\sqrt{2}). This mirrors the algebraic simplification 5(3x)=15x5(3x) = 15x, where the two numerical factors are combined while the variable part remains unchanged.

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Updated 2026-04-21

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