Why is there no solution to the square root of -169?

Answer 1

The answer is an imaginary number, because of the negative under the square root. The same number multiplied together will always be a positive number. For example, if you square negative one, the answer is positive one, because a negative times a negative is a positive. Because a square root undoes a square, there is no solution to the square root of a negative number. That's why your calculator could not compute this problem.

However, there is a way to solve these types of problems by using imaginary numbers. The answer is 13i, where i is the square root of negative one.