Question

If I had something like:

2x^2 + y^2

couldn I factor it into

x^2 (x^2 + y^2)

Answer 1

No. If you were to distribute the x^2, you'd get x^4 + x^2*y^2, not 2x^2 + y^2

You can only factor out the things that are actually factors. In this case, there would be nothing to factor out because there's no factor that 2x^2 and y^2 share.