Let's fly back again to the days of dinosaurs and no calculators!

If math geeks had to calculate a decimal for something like

things got really ugly. 

They'd have to use a table to get the value for ...  Then, they'd have to do the long division by hand:

Yuck!

So, it was a LOT easier for them if there wasn't a radical in the denominator.

They created a fun little game called "rationalizing the denominator."

Here's how it goes:

Multiply by a magic 1.