Enter a number and a root degree to calculate the nth root.
How to Use the Root Calculator
A number and a root degree — degree 2 is a square root, 3 a cube root, and so on for any degree entered.
A root undoes an exponent — it asks what number, raised to a given power, gets you back to where you started. The cube root of 27 is 3, because 3³ = 27. Every root is also a fractional exponent in disguise:
ⁿ√x = x^(1/n)This Root Calculator handles any degree, not just square (n=2) or cube (n=3). Even roots of negative numbers don't exist in real numbers — squaring anything, positive or negative, never produces a negative result, so there's no real number that squares back to −16. Odd roots don't have that problem: the cube root of −8 is −2, since (−2)³ = −8 checks out cleanly.
Square roots turn up constantly in geometry — the Pythagorean theorem, distance between two points — and in statistics, where standard deviation is literally a square root. Higher-order roots tend to show up in growth-rate problems, working backward from a known total return to the steady annual rate that would produce it.