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Believe it or not, there is an interesting connection between plant roots, square roots, and prescription medicine.
Most medicines were (at least at one point) derived from plant roots. The root of a plant is also called a "radix." Did you ever wonder where the common symbol for prescription drugs, Rx, came from? It is an abbreviation of the word radix.
The word "radical" also comes from radix and literally means "of the root." So, at one point in our history, mathematical radicals were written with an "r" in front of them. The notation r(x) indicated a root of x. The index (ie., the little number indicating what kind of root it was) was simply tucked into the upper left hand corner of the r. It's not hard to see how that "r" eventually became the symbol we recognize as the radical symbol.
Kind of cool, huh? | |
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