system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Is there an actual method to find a number's square root?

I've never learned how to manually find a number's square root, just to recognize the common ones or use a calculator.
gpt
Fit non infinite series you can try this:
The square root of a number is just the number which when multiplied by itself gives the first number. So 2 is the square root of 4 because 2 * 2 = 4.

Start with the number you want to find the square root of. Let's use 12. There are three steps:

Guess
Divide
Average.
... and then just keep repeating steps 2 and 3.

First, start by guessing a square root value. It helps if your guess is a good one but it will work even if it is a terrible guess. We will guess that 2 is the square root of 12.

In step two, we divide 12 by our guess of 2 and we get 6.

In step three, we average 6 and 2: (6+2)/2 = 4

Now we repeat step two with the new guess of 4. So 12/4 = 3

Now average 4 and 3: (4+3)/2 = 3.5

Repeat step two: 12/3.5 = 3.43

Average: (3.5 + 3.43)/2 = 3.465

We could keep going forever, getting a better and better approximation but let's stop here to see how we are doing.

    3.465 * 3.465 = 12.006225

That is quite close to 12, so we are doing pretty well.