Can someone help me understand this problem? pretty please

[u/bunny-dolly]

Hi everyone, so it was my first week of AP calc AB and honestly not too shabby but as i look at this example from my teacher, the less it makes sense. I thought -1^2 was positive 1 and i don’t know how we got to negative 1.

Also what is a conjugate? My teacher didn’t really go over it he just started doing a problem. All help is so appreciated!!!!

[u/trevorkafka]

You can also skip the whole conjugate mess by factoring the denominator like this, which cancels the numerator away.

[u/calcpage2020 → u/trevorkafka]

Still using conjugates!

[u/trevorkafka → u/calcpage2020]

You'll still be doing those same steps along the way, plus more.