I hate them. I really don't get them and I have my GCSE's coming up in a few weeks and I need to know how to work with them.

If any of you guys can help me by PM'ing me with 2 or 3 sentences on simply how to do them, that would make my day.

I've been on all revision sites but they are too complicated so I am trying here.

PM me here

Ahh surds. I've been revising these in my revision for the exams too. What are you stuck on ? There's different parts to surds, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division/rationalizing and simplifying. They're pretty complicated and asking a teacher in school would probably help you heaps more than on here for the simple fact you'll probably need it to be broken up to the basics and work your way up.

Sorry, American here, what exactly are Surds?

Numbers which are left in square root form. You usually get them when if the number is rooted, you will have a decimal answer. e.g. root5 or root 11.

Surds is the one element of maths I never understood. I'd be interested to know how they're done, too.

Simplify:

1. To simply for a surd, the first step is to find two factors of the number and make sure one is a square number.

√72 = √9 x √8

2. Now, work out what you can. As you can see, we can work out √9 to a whole number but we cannot with √8.

= 3 x√8

3. Saying 3 x √8 is exactly the same as saying 3√8 which is just pronounced as: 3root8.

=3√8.

If anybody wants to try this themselves, here's two questions to work out, show your working out so we can see you're doing it right - post it up in the thread. :thumbs:

Questions:

Simplify:-

√99.

√64.

Post Script: If anybody wants, I can try and explain each part of surds [adding, subtracting ect.] and keep it like the method above.

So this is basically all the math that is prior to Algebra I? Or just radicals?

Also- here is a pretty good website for some basic practice problems and explanations.

Good Luck with them.

Yeah, another term for them is radicals. Hardly used here though.

I guess take a shot at it :S

quote toby21

Simplify:-

√99.

Not so hard, eh ?

Wait what the hell, surds show up in GCSE maths? Last I checked they don't show up in Extended. If they do, damn I'll need to revise this.

I LOVE SURDS!

Then again, I've had great math teachers. We've never called them surds though.

Cheers people expecially Tobes.

It did help but I suppose, I'll just have to keep on practising.