If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

Main content

Simplifying a cube root

Simplifying Radical Expressions1. Created by Sal Khan and Monterey Institute for Technology and Education.

Want to join the conversation?

Video transcript

We're are asked to find the cube root of negative 343. Or another way to think about it is some number that when I multiply it by itself three times, I'm going to get negative 343. Or another way to view it-- this is the same thing as negative 343 to the 1/3 power. And the best way to do this is to really just try to factor this out. So the first thing that we could do-- so let me just factor negative 343. So the first thing I'd like to do is just factor out the negative 1. So this is the same thing as negative 1 times 343. And let's think about this. Is this divisible by 2? No. Is it divisible by 3? Let's see-- the digits do not add up to a multiple of 3. They add up to 10. So it's not divisible by 3. Not divisible by 4 since it's odd. Not divisible by 5 because it doesn't end with a 5 or a 0. It's not divisible by 6, because it's not divisible by 2 or 3. Is it divisible by 7? Let's check this out. So 7 goes into 343-- 7 goes into 34 four times. 4 times 7 is 28. 34 minus 28 is going to be 6. Bring down the 3. 7 goes into 63 exactly nine times. So then we end up-- so 9 times 7 is 63, no remainder. So this is going to be 7 times 49. And we know that 49 is the same thing as 7 times 7. So how can we rewrite this? This is the same thing as taking the cube root of negative 1 times 7 times 7 times 7, which is the same thing as taking the cube root of negative 1 times the cube root of 7 times 7 times 7. Now, what's the cube root of negative 1? Well, negative 1 times itself three times is negative 1. So this right here is negative 1. You could verify it. Negative 1 times negative 1 times negative 1 is indeed negative 1. This becomes positive 1. Multiply by negative 1 again, you get negative 1. So this is negative 1. And then this over here, the cube root of 7 times 7 times 7-- well, that's just going to be 7. 7 multiplied by itself three times gives us 7 times 7 times 7 or 343. So it's going to be negative 1 times 7, which is the same thing as negative 7. So our answer is negative 7. And we're done.