The Zona family lives in a rectangular shaped apartment with a large square living room. Ms. Zona plans to buy a rug for the living room but it won't cover the entire living room floor. The living room has a
side length of x feet. The function y = 196 - x? describes the area of
the room covered by the rug in square feet. Identify the domain of
this function for this situation

First step is to get rid of the square root. remember that a square root is the same as raising to the (1/2) power. see below: multiply exponents per exponent rules to get: remember you subtract exponents from the denominator and add exponents in the numerator so: simplify further: so a is the correct choice. if you don't understand this google exponent rules and it will you understand. look at the image results.