ShmoopTube

00:03

And here's your shmoop du jour.

00:05

If x equals 1/12, then negative 1 over the square root of x equals… what?

00:11

And here are the potential answers…

00:16

So… what is this question asking?

00:18

Well… let’s just say it’s a good thing we at Shmoop are gluttons for inverse fractional punishment.

00:24

Let’s figure out where we are by rewriting the equation…

00:27

plugging in that “1 over 12” where x is…

00:29

…so we can be rid of that nasty variable.

00:32

We do that and that gets us negative one over the square root of one over 12.

00:38

Yeah, an UGLY fraction.

00:40

We need to simplify with… mathematical make-up.

00:44

Remember that dividing by a fraction is the same as multiplying by its inverse…

00:48

…so we take the 1 over the square root of 12 and flip it over – multiply it by the

00:54

numerator and we get negative square root of 12.

00:56

Ok, much prettier Now we can simplify a bit further…

01:00

12 is 4 times 3 and we can rewrite it as the square root of 4 times the square root of 3.

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Well, the square root of 4 is 2… so we have negative 2 times the square root of 3…

01:13

…and or answer is A.

01:14

As in, “Autumn.”

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