Alright, education time needed!

I'm a fair few years out from my entry level uni maths module, so:

In between the second and third step of the solution, why is 1a / 2√a = 6

not evaluating as

a/√a = 12 ?

I refuse to help with a problem as trivial as that. They should be perfectly capable of finding on their own any one of the 4 a:s in the picture they posted.

Would fail at hide and seek - https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/756624c5-b684-4d31-8278-982d22f6bcb9.webp

The second guy fucked up on the second step.

1a

I'm literally too stupid to understand math memes.

I have learned from StackOverflow that we should always ask if this is homework. Otherwise, the solution appears fine.

This is absurd. It says find "a" but which "a"? There are more than one. In American "math" there can only be one "a". In British "maths" it looks like there can be more than one "a", so it depends on where you are from.