Quick help?

Question

Why is it that the sube root of a negative number is a real number but the square root of a negative number is not real?

Answer 1

Because you can multiply (-3)(-3)(-3) = -27.

But if you multiply (-3)(-3) = 9. There are no two negative numbers that you can multiply together to get a negative number, so you can't take the square root of a negative.

But you can take the cube root of a negative, because you can multiply a negative 3 times to get a negative.

It's the same for all powers: if it's even, you can't take a negative root, if it's odd, you can