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This method of proof can easily be generalised to prove that
is irrational when
is not a square number.
What is the length of the diagonal of a square with sides of length 2?
How do we find the value of
?
What number has 2 as its square?
What is the side of a square which has area 2?
Now
, so the number
is roughly
. To get a
better approximation divide
by
giving about
, and take
the
average of
and
to get
. Repeating this process,
so
, and the
average of these gives the next approximation
. We can continue
this process indefinitely getting better approximations but never finding the
square root exactly.
If
were a rational number, that is if it could be written as a
fraction
where
and
are integers, then we
could find the exact value. The proof sorter shows that this number is
IRRATIONAL so we cannot find an exact value.