Cube Root Calculator

In mathematics, a cube root of a number x is a number y such that y3 = x. All nonzero real numbers, have exactly one real cube root and a pair of complex conjugate cube roots, and all nonzero complex numbers have three distinct complex cube roots.

For example, the real cube root of 8, denoted 3√8, is 2, because 23 = 8.

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In some contexts, particularly when the number whose cube root is to be taken is a real number, one of the cube roots (in this particular case the real one) is referred to as the principal cube root, denoted with the radical sign 3√. The cube root operation is associative with exponentiation and distributive with multiplication and division if considering only real numbers, but not always if considering complex numbers: for example, the cube of any cube root of 8 is 8, but the three cube roots of 83 are 8, −4 + 4i√3, and −4 − 4i√3.

Real Numbers

For any real number x, there is one real number y such that y3 = x. The cube function is increasing, so does not give the same result for two different inputs, plus it covers all real numbers. In other words, it is a bisection, or one-to-one. Then we can define an inverse function that is also one-to-one. For real numbers, we can define a unique cube root of all real numbers. If this definition is used, the cube root of a negative number is a negative number.

If x and y are allowed to be complex, then there are three solutions (if x is non-zero) and so x has three cube roots. A real number has one real cube root and two further cube roots which form a complex conjugate pair.

Cube roots arise in the problem of finding an angle whose measure is one third that of a given angle (angle trisection) and in the problem of finding the edge of a cube whose volume is twice that of a cube with a given edge (doubling the cube). In 1837 Pierre Wantzel proved that neither of these can be done with a compass-and-straightedge construction.

Cubic equations, which are polynomial equations of the third degree (meaning the highest power of the unknown is 3), can always be solved for their three solutions in terms of cube roots and square roots (although simpler expressions only in terms of square roots exist for all three solutions, if at least one of them is a rational number). If two of the solutions are complex numbers, then all three solution expressions involve the real cube root of a real number, while if all three solutions are real numbers then they may be expressed in terms of the complex cube root of a complex number.

Quadratic equations can also be solved in terms of cube roots and square roots.

The calculation of cube roots can be traced back to Babylonian mathematicians from as early as 1800 BCE. In the fourth century BCE Plato posed the problem of doubling the cube, which required a compass-and-straightedge construction of the edge of a cube with twice the volume of a given cube; this required the construction, now known to be impossible, of the length 3√2.

A method for extracting cube roots appears in The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, a Chinese mathematical text compiled around the 2nd century BCE and commented on by Liu Hui in the 3rd century CE. The Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria devised a method for calculating cube roots in the 1st century CE. His formula is again mentioned by Eutokios in a commentary on Archimedes. In 499 CE Aryabhata, a mathematician-astronomer from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy, gave a method for finding the cube root of numbers having many digits in the Aryabhatiya (section 2.5).

nth Root

In mathematics, an nth root of a number x, where n is usually assumed to be a positive integer is a number r which, when raised to the power n yields x:

Any non-zero number considered as a complex number has n different complex nth roots, including the real ones (at most two). The nth root of 0 is zero for all positive integers n, since 0n = 0. In particular, if n is even and x is a positive real number, one of its nth roots is real and positive, one is negative, and the others (when n > 2) are non-real complex numbers; if n is even and x is a negative real number, none of the nth roots is real. If n is odd and x is real, one nth root is real and has the same sign as x, while the other (n – 1) roots are not real. Finally, if x is not real, then none of its nth roots are real.