Which answer is correct? Finding the limit of a radical as $x$ approaches infinity. When I take $$\lim_{x \to -∞} \sqrt{x^2+7x}+x,$$ I multiply by the conjugate over the conjugate to get
$$\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{7x}{\sqrt{x^2+7x}-x},$$ and multiply by either $\frac{\frac{1}{x}}{\frac{1}{x}}$ or $\frac{\frac{1}{-x}}{\frac{1}{-x}}$ to get an undefined answer or $\frac{-7}{2}.$
My teacher's solution involves multiplying by $\frac{\frac{1}{-x}}{\frac{1}{-x}}:$
$$=\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{-7}{\sqrt{x^2/x^2+7x/x^2}+1}$$
$$=-\frac{7}{\sqrt{1+0}+1}$$
$$=\frac{-7}{2}$$
However, I multiplied
by $\frac{\frac{1}{x}}{\frac{1}{x}}$ and got the following:
$$\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{7}{\sqrt{x^2/x^2+7x/x^2}-1}$$
$$\frac{7}{\sqrt{1+0}-1}$$
$$\frac{7}{0}$$
Which is undefined.
Why does multiplying by what is essentially $1$ cause different answers in general, and in particular for evaluating limits?

Your teacher has left out some justification, which is probably why you are confused.
In general, we have the following identity for all real $x$:
$$\sqrt{x^2}=|x|.\tag{1}$$ Also, for nonnegative real $a$ and positive real $b,$ we have $$\frac{\sqrt{a}}{\sqrt{b}}=\sqrt{\frac ab}.\tag{2}$$ Putting $(1)$ and $(2)$ together, if $x$ a non-zero real number and $a$ is a nonnegative real number, then $$\frac1{|x|}\sqrt{a}=\sqrt{\frac a{x^2}}.\tag{$\star$}$$

Your teacher took advantage of $(\star),$ without being explicit about it. In particular, since we're taking the limit as $x\to-\infty,$ then we may as well assume that $x\le-7$ (since it has to be, eventually), so that $x^2+7x$ is nonnegative, $x$ is non-zero, and $-x=|x|.$ Thus, we have $$\frac{1}{-x}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=\frac1{|x|}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=\sqrt{\frac{x^2+7x}{x^2}}.$$
On the other hand, $$\frac{1}{x}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=\frac1{-|x|}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=-\frac1{|x|}\sqrt{x^2+7x}=-\sqrt{\frac{x^2+7x}{x^2}}.$$ From there, you should come up with the same answer.
