Question

what are surds? are √2 and √3 surds?

Answer 1

Surds are numbers left in 'square root form' (or 'cube root form' etc). They are therefore irrational numbers. The reason we leave them as surds is because in decimal form they would go on forever and so this is a very clumsy way of writing them. √2 and √3 are surds because they can't be more simplified more to remove the square root.