[Math] Repeating Square Root Simplification

algebra-precalculussequences-and-series

Alright, so I have a question on a little open-book challenge-test thingy that deals with repeating square roots, in a form as follows…

$\sqrt{6+\sqrt{6+\sqrt{6+\cdots}}}$

Repeated 2012 times (2012 total square roots)

Over and over and over again. I am newish to TeX, so I am not exactly sure how to model it the way it shows up on paper. It looks sorta like:

$$s_n = \sqrt{n+\sqrt{n+\sqrt{n+\cdots}}}$$

How is something like this simplified?

Working it out logically (I am a highschool freshman, mind you), I get something like this for my example:
$3-\frac{1}{6^{2011}}$

Is this correct? It seems like I could use some sort of limit to prove this, but I have not officially gone through anything beyond Geometry. Now, I do own bits and pieces of knowledge when it comes to calculus and such, but not enough to count on with this sorta thing 😉

EDIT|IMPORTANT: This is what I need to prove: $3 > \sqrt{6+\sqrt{6+\sqrt{6+\cdots}}} > 3-\frac{1}{5^{2011}}$

Where the \cdots means however many more square roots are needed to make a total of 2012

Best Answer

Your edit suggests using induction. Define $f(0)=\sqrt 6, f(n+1)=\sqrt{6+f(n)}$ We would like to prove $f(n)\gt 3-\frac 1{5^n}$. Certainly this is true for $n=0$, as it asserts $\sqrt 6 \gt 2$, $n=1$ where it asserts $\sqrt{6+\sqrt 6} \approx 2.906 \gt 3-\frac 15$ and $n=2$ where $f(2)\approx 2.9844 \gt 3-\frac 1{5^2}$. Now assume it is true for $k$, then $f(k+1)=\sqrt {6+f(k)}\gt \sqrt{9-\frac 1{5^k}}=3\sqrt{1-\frac1{9\cdot 5^k}}\gt 3(1-\frac1{16\cdot 5^k})\gt3-\frac1{ 5^{k+1}}$

The next to last inequality comes from $\sqrt{1-\frac1{9\cdot 5^k}} \approx 1-\frac 1{2\cdot 9 \cdot 5^k} - \frac 1{8\cdot 9^2 \cdot 5^{2k}} \gt 1-\frac 1{16\cdot 5^k}$ because $\frac 1{16}-\frac 1{18}=\frac 1{144} $ which dominates all the remaining terms in the expansion.