Someone's desperately trying to find √2 in the list of perfect squares! The mathematical tragedy here is that √2 (approximately 1.414...) is famously irrational - meaning it can't be expressed as a fraction and definitely isn't hiding in that neat list of perfect squares. It's like searching for a unicorn in a horse stable.
Mathematicians have been proving √2 is irrational since ancient Greece, but this student's apparently still holding out hope they'll find it between 144 and 169. Spoiler alert: they could check perfect squares until the heat death of the universe and never find it!
The quadratic formula on the side is just adding insult to injury. Math homework: where hope goes to die and irrational numbers stay stubbornly irrational.