To simplify a square root, we need to find perfect squarefactors inside the radicand. It may seem difficult at first to simplify the square root of 1.44 because it is a decimal number. However, let's look at this number as though it was not a decimal value (just for a little while). The number 144 is actually a perfect square. Let's simplify this first.
Now that we know that sqrt(144)=12, we can use this to find sqrt(1.44). When we multiply decimals, we add the number of decimal places from each factor to find the number of decimal places in the product.
&1.2_(1 decimal +)*1.2_(1decimal =)=1.44_(2 decimal places.) [2em]
& sqrt(1.44)=1.2
The square root can be simplified to 1.2. The same reasoning holds when we consider -sqrt(1.44). In this case, we obtain - 1.2 so the answer is ± 1.2.
