• Question: what is the square root of -0 (this broke my calculator)

    Asked by yurt534dote63 on 27 Oct 2025.
    • Photo: Amy Mason

      Amy Mason answered on 27 Oct 2025:

      That is because you are smarter than your calculator and can work out things it can’t.

      So we need a couple of piece of information to solve this.
      First 0x0 is 0 – so the square root of 0 is 0.

      Second, the square root of -a is i times the square root of a. Here i is the square root of -1, an imaginary number – if you don’t know about them, you should read or watch something about them.

      So the square root of -0 is i x 0 – but anything times 0 is 0, so that answer is 0.

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