Today’s ACT question of the day is a math question about simplifying radicals.  There’s a lot more practice with radicals where that came from!

All we have to do is simplify √20. Start thinking of the factors of 20…now.

20 can be factored into:

20 * 1

2 * 10

4 * 5

4 is a perfect square, so I’m going to use that last set of factors.

√20 = √(4 * 5)

√4 = 2, so we can pull a 2 outside the radical like this: 2√5, or choice A.

5 has to stay underneath the radical because we can’t factor it with integers.

All done! This is an important skill to have for your test…so don’t get stressed out just because you saw the radical sign!