Cube root some contexts, particularly when the number whose cube root is to be taken is a real number, one of the cube roots (in this particular case the real one) is referred to as the "principal cube root", denoted with the radical sign . The cube root operation is associative with exponentiation and distributive with multiplication and division if considering only real numbers, but not always if considering complex numbers: for example, the cube of any cube root of 8 is 8, but the three cube roots of 8 are 8, −4 + 4"i", and −4 − 4"i". The cube roots
Doubling the cube at solving what they saw as an obstinate but soluble problem. However, the nonexistence of a solution was finally proven by Pierre Wantzel in 1837. In algebraic terms, doubling a unit cube requires the construction of a line segment of length , where ; in other words, . This is because a cube of side length 1 has a volume of , and a cube of twice that volume (a volume of 2) has a side length of the cube root of 2. The impossibility of doubling the cube is therefore equivalent to the statement that is not a constructible