Question

A square garden plot has an area of 24 ft2.

Answer 1

The area of a square is equal to the side squared.
$s^2=A$

We can plug in 24 for A and then take the square root of each side to find s.
$s^2=24 \\ s=\sqrt{24}$

We can simplify √24.
The prime factorization of 24 is 2×2×2×3.
Since we have 2×2 inside the radical we can simplify to have 2 outside the radical.
$\sqrt{24}=\sqrt{4\times6}=\boxed{2\sqrt{6}\ ft}$

We can then use a calculator to find an approximate decimal value for 2√6.
(You could technically calculate it by hand using the Babylonian method, I don't think you're expected to do that, though)
$2\sqrt{6}\approx\boxed{4.9\ ft}$