Question

When I ask my calculator for a decimal value of √2, it displays 1.414213562. What is the meaning of this number? To check whether this square root is correct, what needs to be done? Can the square root of 2 be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers such as 17 ? 12

Answer 1

$\sqrt{2}$ absolutely can not be written in the form $\frac{p}{q}$ , the value you have given is a approximate value of $\sqrt{2}$ .
The problem may want to tell you any irrational number can be approximately represented by a rational number.