We saw that the complex (non-real) fifth roots of 1 occur in conjugate pairs. Thus if b is the complex conjugate of a and both a and b satisfy z^5 = 1, then the factor theorem tells us that (x-a) and (x-b) are factors of x^5-1. Multiplying (x-a) by (x-b) gives us a real quadratic factor of x^5 - 1. Thus we can convert the linear (complex) factors into real quadratic factors. We work through other examples finding roots of non-real numbers.