[General] We can regard each row and column of a square mesh of p node

[tahasozgen]

Hi There;
There is a sentence from a book that I cannot understand.

We can regard each row and column of a square mesh of p nodes as a linear array of p^1/2 nodes.

'^1/2' is a special symbol that represents a square root. That means p^1/2 equals the square root of p.

This text has been taken from a textbook, you can think of it as communicating cells as depicted below:

 

[Roman55]

What is it that you don't understand?

You have shown us a square mesh of 16 nodes, and each row, and each column of it contains 4 nodes. 4 is the square root of 16. If it's a square mesh, each row and / or column must represent the square root of the whole.