How Do You Find The Exact Value Of Square Root of 3, 5, 7, 11?

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SUMMARY

The discussion focuses on the impossibility of finding exact decimal values for the square roots of non-perfect squares such as 3, 5, 7, and 11. These square roots are classified as irrational numbers, meaning they cannot be expressed as terminating or repeating decimals, nor as fractions. The best representation for these values remains in their radical form, such as √2, √3, √5, and √7. Additionally, the concept of infinite continued fractions is introduced as a method to express these square roots, particularly highlighting the regularity of such representations.

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  • Familiarity with square roots and perfect squares
  • Knowledge of arithmetic algorithms for approximation
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Is there any method to find the exact value of the square root of 3,5,7,11,13,14,15,17,18, etc.?

Thank you
 
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Arithmetic algorithms can approximate these square roots, but because they are all irrational, the decimal representations are non-repeating and non-terminating.
 
The exact values of the square root of 2, 3, 5 ,7, 11, etc are \sqrt{2}, \sqrt{3}, \sqrt{5}, \sqrt{7}, \sqrt{11}. That's the best you can do. As SteamKing said, all of those, and, in fact, the square root of any integer that is not a "perfect square", are irrational- they cannot be written as a terminating decimal, they cannot be written as a repeating decimal like "0.14141414...", and cannot be written as a fraction (integer over integer).

(I added "2" to the beginning of your list. I am surprized you did not have it.)
 
Might as well add 6, 8, 10, and so on to the list, since none of these is a perfect square, and consequently does not have a square root that is rational.
 
If instead of a infinite decimal expansion you would accept some other infinite expression then you can express the square root of 2 as an infinite continued fraction.
 
lavinia said:
If instead of a infinite decimal expansion you would accept some other infinite expression then you can express the square root of 2 as an infinite continued fraction.

The infinite fraction representation is a really nice one because it exhibits a lot of regularity. In the decimal expansion of ##\sqrt{2}##, there is no way to know which decimal comes next. But the infinite fraction is very straightforward and exhibits a nice pattern.
 

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