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jmc

algebra senior

Problem

Find the sum of all real solutions to the equation
Solution
We want to square the equation in order to eliminate the radicals. To do so, we first move the term to the right-hand side, giving Now we see that squaring will produce lots of common terms on the left-hand and right-hand sides, which cancel: which simplifies to Squaring both sides, multiplying, and rearranging gives the quadratic By Vieta's formulas, the sum of the roots of this quadratic is

To be complete, we must check that both of these roots satisfy the original equation. There are two steps in our above solution which could potentially not be reversible: squaring the equation and squaring the equation To check that these steps are reversible, we need to make sure that both sides of the equations in both steps are nonnegative whenever is a root of This quadratic is equivalent to so which is positive, and which is also positive. Therefore, all our steps were reversible, so both roots of the quadratic satisfy the original equation as well.
Final answer
\frac{64}{9}