Questions about applicable math in Electrical Engineering...

[rsocor01]

Adam,
It looks like you really enjoy Number Theory. What you are talking about is well documented and people have been working with squares since the beginning of civilization (remember the Pithagorean theorem). Get a book about the history of Math or Number theory, you will enjoy it.
The pattern that you are talking about is called "The Difference of Squares". If you have two whole numbers X and Y then
(X^2) - (Y^2) = (X-Y)(X+Y)
If you have two consecutive numbers then (X-Y)=1, so the difference would be the sum of the numbers. Hope that this helps.

Robert

[rxforspeed]

Thanks for the info-I knew that somebody HAD to have noticed that before, but I had figured the equation out before being shown. There are plenty of ways to revise that formula to find squares many numbers away, but it's really more efficient to just grab a calculator (or even to just write out the number to be squared)...

I'll have to search for the "Number Theory" when I get another chunk of homework knocked out. I really appreciate your feedback, rsocor01. It's the many educated and skilled members of this forum like yourself that make it such a great place. Sorry if it had seemed like I was irritated or a bit harsh in that last post (I had just read it again since I had posted it and I didn't particularly like the way I had it written), I was just up late and aggravated with my homework; I didn't mean to come off like an ass, so please don't take it that way.

I see where you had gotten "X*N=X*N" now after working a few examples with your last equation, (X^2) - (Y^2) = (X-Y)(X+Y). I know how to use "F.O.I.L." and factor, but the only "difference of squares" I remember learning was noticing the two identical variables with opposite signs and knowing that the outer and inner multiplication would cancel each other out. I wish my teachers would have gone into more depth on that...

Thanks for your time and patience with me...