How do you solve 4x^2 - 16 = 04x216=0?

2 Answers
Apr 23, 2018

x = +-2x=±2

Explanation:

  1. Add 1616 to both sides to get 4x^2=164x2=16
  2. Divide both sides by 44 to get x^2=4x2=4
  3. Find the square root of both sides to get x = +-2x=±2
Apr 24, 2018

x=+-2x=±2

Explanation:

4x^2-164x216 fits the difference of squares property

a^2-b^2a2b2, which can be factored as (a+b)(a-b)(a+b)(ab)

Here, we can take the square root of 4x^24x2, which is 2x2x and we can take the square root of 1616 which is +-4±4.

Thus, a=2xa=2x and b=+-4b=±4, so we have

(2x+4)(2x-4)=0(2x+4)(2x4)=0

We can factor a 22 out of both expressions to get

2(x+2)(x-2)2(x+2)(x2)

Setting the factors equal to zero, we get

x=+-2x=±2

Hope this helps!