Surds

A surd is a square root which cannot be reduced to a whole number. Surds are irrational; they are decimals that never end and never repeat, so cannot be written as fractions. Leaving a number in it's surd form is easier and more accurate than writing and rounding the decimal places. We see surds in Pythagoras for example. To simplify surds you look for the largest square number that goes into it. You then split the surd into this square number and what it multiplies to make the original surd number. So root 8 would split into root 4 X root 2 because 4 is the square number and it multiplies by 2 to give the original 8.