Square root of 2

Imagine you have a very big cookie (or any shape you like) and you want to cut it into exactly two equal pieces. You take a knife and cut it right down the middle. You now have two smaller cookies that are the same size.

Now imagine if you had to cut the same big cookie into two pieces that were equal in size as best as you could, but you couldn't use the middle line anymore. This time, you have to start at one edge of the cookie and cut it in a way that you end up with two smaller pieces that are as close as possible to being equal.

In math terms, the size of the pieces you end up with is represented by a number. And this number for cutting a cookie as close to equal as possible is called the square root of 2. It is like a secret number that tells us how long the two pieces of cookie should be so that they are as close to being equal as they can be.

When mathematicians first studied this number, they found that it goes on and on and on after the decimal point without ever repeating the same pattern of numbers. So, we can't write the whole number down, but we use a symbol to represent it: √2. This symbol means the same thing as the square root of 2.

So, whenever you see the symbol √2, you now know that it represents a special number that tells you how to cut a cookie in a way that is as close to equal as possible, without using the middle line. And this number goes on and on after the decimal point, without any pattern repeating itself.