How do you factor $x^2+36y^2$ ?

Question

4684 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2017-01-05T01:58:43

A sum of two squares cannot be factored using real numbers.

In order to factor $a^2+b^2$ , we need to think of it as

$a^2-(-b^2)$ .

Then we can factor using imaginary numbers:

$a^2-(-b^2) = (a+bi)(a-bi)$ where $i^2 = -1$ .

So

$x^2+36y^2 = (x+6yi)(x-6yi)$ where $i^2 = -1$ .

How do you factor x^2+36y^2x^2+36y^2?