<s>[INST] Which answer is correct? Finding the limit of a radical as $x$ approaches infinity. When I take $$\lim_{x \to -∞} \sqrt{x^2+7x}+x,$$ I multiply by the conjugate over the conjugate to get
$$\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{7x}{\sqrt{x^2+7x}-x},$$ and multiply by either $\frac{\frac{1}{x}}{\frac{1}{x}}$ or $\frac{\frac{1}{-x}}{\frac{1}{-x}}$ to get an undefined answer or $\frac{-7}{2}.$
My teacher's solution involves multiplying by $\frac{\frac{1}{-x}}{\frac{1}{-x}}:$
$$=\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{-7}{\sqrt{x^2/x^2+7x/x^2}+1}$$
$$=-\frac{7}{\sqrt{1+0}+1}$$
$$=\frac{-7}{2}$$
However, I multiplied
by $\frac{\frac{1}{x}}{\frac{1}{x}}$ and got the following:
$$\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{7}{\sqrt{x^2/x^2+7x/x^2}-1}$$
$$\frac{7}{\sqrt{1+0}-1}$$
$$\frac{7}{0}$$
Which is undefined.
Why does multiplying by what is essentially $1$ cause different answers in general, and in particular for evaluating limits?
 [/INST] Your teacher has left out some justification, which is probably why you are confused.
In general, we have the following identity for all real $x$:
$$\sqrt{x^2}=|x|.\tag{1}$$ Also, for nonnegative real $a$ and positive real $b,$ we have $$\frac{\sqrt{a}}{\sqrt{b}}=\sqrt{\frac ab}.\tag{2}$$ Putting $(1)$ and $(2)$ together, if $x$ a non-zero real number and $a$ is a nonnegative real number, then $$\frac1{|x|}\sqrt{a}=\sqrt{\frac a{x^2}}.\tag{$\star$}$$

Your teacher took advantage of $(\star),$ without being explicit about it. In particular, since we're taking the limit as $x\to-\infty,$ then we may as well assume that $x\le-7$ (since it has to be, eventually), so that $x^2+7x$ is nonnegative, $x$ is non-zero, and $-x=|x|.$ Thus, we have $$\frac{1}{-x}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=\frac1{|x|}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=\sqrt{\frac{x^2+7x}{x^2}}.$$
On the other hand, $$\frac{1}{x}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=\frac1{-|x|}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=-\frac1{|x|}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=-\sqrt{\frac{x^2+7x}{x^2}}.$$ From there, you should come up with the same answer.
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