Question

What is the product of the radical expression?

Answer 1

\[(7-\sqrt{2})(8+\sqrt{2})\]

Answer 2

Just use the distributive property or FOIL for expanding the product of binomials.

It should be remembered that FOIL is just a method that applies ONLY to the product of binomials and is basically a result of the distributive property.

Using the distributive property on the product of binomials, say (a + b)(c + d) is evaluated as:

a(c + d) + b(c + d) = ac + ad + bc + bd

As you can see, we "distributed" the second bracket to each element of the first bracket and then we did some simplification. Can you do the same in your case?

@mike007smith