Squares, Square Roots, and the Quadratic Formula

George McCarty
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George McCarty: University of California

Chapter 1 in Calculator Calculus, 1982, pp 1-13 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Since people began using numbers for measuring lengths, they have wanted to find the square roots of those numbers. There are many situations in which a square root is needed. For instance, knowing the square root is useful if you want to find the length of the side of a square field of a given area or the length of its diagonal when the side is known. The ancient Babylonian mathematicians were even solving quadratic equations in the time of Hammurabi, a Babylonian king of the eighteenth century B.C. Their method for approximating square roots was a first step in the more accurate repetitive process discovered by Hero of Alexandria about the time of Christ. This process, now known as Newton’s method, is universally used today.

Date: 1982
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4684-6484-9_1

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