Wednesday, 11/18/15: Factoring Differences of Squares and Perfect Square Trinomials

Tonight's homework is from a photocopy I distributed today, which we marked as "II. Difference of Squares."  All problems are assigned, except for the problems which are crossed out.

Period 5:  I forgot to mention that not every trinomial at the bottom of the page is a perfect square trinomial!  Remember, to be a perfect square trinomial:

• first term has to be a perfect square
• last term has to be positive and a perfect square
• if you take "half of the middle coefficient and square it" and get the last term, then it's a perfect square trinomial

If you find that the trinomial is not a perfect square trinomial, you can try diamond trash on it.  If it's not a perfect square trinomial and you can't factor it with diamond trash, then it's prime (cannot factor).