Introduction

When you try to get the area of a square ^[1] and know the length of a side ^[2] you multiply the length of one side by itself or square it.

area of square

What if you don't know the length of a side and instead only know the area of a square and want to get the length of a side? You would have to do something to the area that transforms it in the opposite direction that squaring the length of a side does. This is just like how placing 2 apples to a pile transforms a pile of apples by increasing the amount of apples and eating 2 apples transforms the pile back to the way it was. So in other words adding is to subtracting as squaring is to.... what?

Well this kind of transformation is called a Square Root.

^{^︎}
A shape where all sides are equal
^{^︎}
Otherwise known as its root