Thursday, September 5, 2019

algebra precalculus - Writing square root of square-free numbers as sum of square roots.

Some days ago i came across a question about writing 2001 as sum of two other square roots. I managed to prove that this is not possible unless one of them is zero and the other one is 2001.

The proof was as following: 2001=a+b, 2001a=b so 2001+a22001a=b. This shows that 22001a is an integer so 2001a is a perfect square.
We also know that 2001=32329 which is a square-free number. so a must divide all of 3,23,29 which means a2001 soa2001 and b0 which means b=0.

With exact method we can prove that s=a+b does not have any natural solutions with s being a square-free number. Then I tried to generalize the proof for 3 or more square roots but i failed. The only thing I always get is ab+bc+ac is an integer which does not help at all.
For what numbers can we write the square root of a square-free number as sum of three or more non-zero square roots? I would appreciate any help.

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