How Do You √ ?

Its just one little button on your calculator — or on your calculator *app*, fine — but how exactly does your device work out the square root of a number?

An octopus, an ancient Mesopotamian, and Sir Isaac Newton line up to compete for the SQRT prize.

This video was originally created for the University of Sydney's online course, Numbers and Numerics (NaN).

Credits:
Octopus video:    • タコのすごい能力！- The terrible ability of th...  
Babylonian tablet: Yale Babylonian Collection, photo by Bill Casselman, www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/Euclid/ybc/ybc.html
Babylonian statue: photo by Flickr user Rosemaniakos,
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mesopotamia_male_worshiper_2750-2600_B.C.jpg
Abraham house in Ur: photo by Aziz1005,
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20160105-Abraham_house_in_Ur_Iraq.jpg
Milky Way: NASA