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
Cube root this required the construction, now known to be impossible, of the length . A method for extracting cube roots appears in "The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art", a Chinese mathematical text compiled around the 2nd century BCE and commented on by Liu Hui in the 3rd century CE. The Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria devised a method for calculating cube roots in the 1st century CE. His formula is again mentioned by Eutokios in a commentary on Archimedes. In 499 CE Aryabhata, a mathematician-astronomer from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy, gave a method for finding