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jmc

algebra junior

Problem

Find the roots of . Enter your answer as a list of numbers separated by commas.
Solution
Since the polynomial has no constant term, we can immediately factor out an from every term and our first root . Let . Then the remaining roots of our original polynomial are the roots of . By trying out simple values, we can see that and . Thus, there must be a root of between and . From the Rational Root Theorem, we know that if then must divide and must divide .

Checking rational numbers of the form , where divides and divides , and is between and , we find that This means that is a factor of Dividing by gives us .

The quadratic factors as so our last two roots are and .

Thus, the roots of are .
Final answer
0, \frac{1}{2}, \frac{4}{3}, -5