Quadratics
Grade 10 Math
Shiyana Veerasingam
1. Perfect Square Trinomials
A perfect square trinomial always starts and ends with a square and looks like:
(a+b)2 = a2+2ab+b2
To solve this form of equation, you must factor, find the missing variable or both.
Example: 4x2+12x+9
The square of 4x is 2x and the square of 9 is 3 and this would be written as (2x+3) (2x+3) or (2x+3)2
Special Cases
The two different types of special cases in factoring are perfect square trinomials and difference of squares.
2. Difference of Square
A trinomial is a difference of squares if it looks like:
a2-b2= (a+b) (a-b)
To solve this equation, you must factor it completely.
There is no bx value found in the equation. The same factoring steps used to solved a perfect square can be used when solving difference of squares. The first and last variables that are squared are the answers.
For instance: x2-9
The square of x2 is x and the square of 9 is 3 and can be written as (x-3) (x+3.