So I got this expression
(45+3*sqrt(229))/(17+sqrt(229))
that I want to rationalize. radcan did nothing, and I found that the
simplifier was too smart for me -- when I tried multiplying by 1 in the
form of the conjugate to the denominator over itself the simplifier saw
it was 1 and ignored it. I tried both
((45+3*sqrt(229))/(17+sqrt(229))) * ((17-sqrt(229))/(17-sqrt(229)))
and
((45+3*sqrt(229))*(17-sqrt(229))) / ((17+sqrt(229))*(17-sqrt(229)))
to no avail; both returned the original expression.
I was finally able to force it in two steps by first dividing the
original expression by (17-sqrt(229)) and then multiplying the result by
the same thing, using radcan in each step.
I tried looking through the docs and found nothing that looked helpful
under radical or rationalize or conjugate. So is there an incantation
that will do the simplification I want automagically, or is manual
step-by-step the only way. I would think that such an elementary
transformation would be in the basic bag of tricks, but I've been fooled
before.
--
Bill Wood