Video Transcript
Let’s take a quick look at finding
squares of numbers.
A square of a number is a power
that has an exponent of two.
If someone says, find the square of
five, what do you think they mean? This is what they mean, five with
an exponent of two, five squared. When we’re squaring numbers, we’re
multiplying them by themselves. Here, that would be five times
five. So, the square of five is 25. Here’s a way to visualize this
square, five rows of five, for a total of 25 blocks.
Here’s another example.
Find the square of 16.
Well, I know that that means 16
squared, 16 to the power of two. I also know that that means 16
times 16. And from here, we really have two
choices, you can solve it by hand or solve it with a calculator. If I’m going to solve it by hand, I
set it up this way. It looks like this, for a final
answer of 256. And the calculator method, 16 times
16 will return the same answer of 256.
Our last example asks us to find
the square of 20.
I know that that means we want to
take 20 to the power of two, which means 20 times 20. If I solve it by hand, I start
here. This returns the answer of 400. Verifying that with my calculator
method also returns the answer of 400. The square of 20 equals 400. Now, it’s your turn to go try and
find some squares.
