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Course: 5th grade > Unit 7
Lesson 3: Dividing unit fractions by whole numbersVisually dividing unit fraction by a whole number
Learn how to divide fractions by whole numbers. You'll watch how dividing a fraction into smaller parts changes the denominator. Then, you'll practice this concept with examples to understand how dividing fractions works.
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i cant understand the topic(9 votes)
To divide a unit fraction by a whole number:
1) Write 1 in the numerator.
2) Write the product of the unit fraction’s denominator and the whole number, for the new denominator.
Example: let’s divide 1/5 by 8.
The numerator is 1.
The new denominator is 5 x 8 = 40.
The answer is 1/40.
Have a blessed, wonderful day!(17 votes)
How would you show it on a number line, though?(9 votes)
you take the reciprocal of 3/1 which is 1/3 and then you would do 1/3 x 1/5 and get 1/15 and then you take the denominator and put the denominator as the total number of points and split it into 3 groups of 5.(5 votes)
- How I do it is like this. For example 1/5 divided by 7. First write it down. 1/5 divided by 7. then you multiply by making the 7 a fraction like this. 1/5 divided by 1/7. Now just multiply 5 times 7. witch is 35. then just write the 1 on top of the 35. or just write the 1 first like this 1/35 and that is how you do it!(5 votes)
- Did you just type in division instead of multiplication? That’s a very bad mistake, and is little bit rare. Cause 1/5 divided by 1/7 is 7/5. To divide 1/5 divided by 7, you keep the dividend aka the one you’re going to divide, change the division symbol to multiplication, and flip the fraction. Since 7 can be written into 7/1, the reciprocal of 7 is 1/7. So you’re now onto 1/5 times 1/7. The rule of multiplying fractions is to multiply the numerators together and multiply the denominators together. 1 times 1 is 1 and for third graders, 5 times 7 is 35 because (5 times 5) plus (5 times 2) is 25 plus 10 which is 35. So the quotient which you correctly stated, is 1/35.(4 votes)
- Can you help me see why it's not 3/15? 1/5 divided by 3 equals logically 3 1/15ths. Why are we saying 1/15th I have autism and this is why I asking. Thanks!(3 votes)
In fraction division (fraction divided by whole number) you have to leave the numerator untouched. You just go to the denominator. So if it is 1/4 (1 fourth) divided by 6 you MULTIPLY 4 and 6 (24) you just put 24 as the denominator and 1 as the numerator. If it is 5\9 (five-ninths) divided by 8 you MULTIPLY 8 and 9 (72) you put that as the denominator and leave the numerator the same(5) the answer would then be 5\72(five-seventytwoths) get it?(7 votes)
- This topic I find to be easy. But I have a harder time when it deals with bigger fractions like 75/1000. I need help with thos fractions.(5 votes)
- I see 4/28 is 1/28 a simplified fraction?(3 votes)
This makes more sense now(2 votes)- 2:43I understand that the pattern is to multiply the unit fractions with the whole number to approximate the correct answer. I don't understand the visuals explaining it though. I feel like I'm missing a key concept.(2 votes)
cant you just change them to fractions and divide it like that?(2 votes)
can you show an example where it is like something like 5 divided by 1/4 or something?(2 votes)
5 divided by 1/4 is 20 because i like to do it this way-
You times the whole number by the denominator. For example- 11 divided by 1/6 is 66 as you times 11 (the whole number)by 6 (the denominator).(1 vote)
2:43
Video transcript
- We are asked to figure out
what is 1/7 divided by four, and they help us out with this diagram. We have a whole divided
into seven equal sections. Each of those is a seventh, and we have one of those
sevenths filled in, so this is 1/7 right over here, and then they divide it
into four equal sections. In fact, they divide
all of the sevenths into four equal sections, and so 1/7, which is this whole green
bar divided by four, well what would be this
fraction of the whole that is in a question mark. Can you pause this video
and figure out what fraction of the whole is this question mark? When we divided the first
seventh into four equal sections, we also divided
all of the sevenths into four equal sections, and so now the entire
whole is 28 equal sections because you have a four by seven grid. You have one, two, three, four rows and you still have your seven columns, and you can count them, seven, 14, 21, 28, and so 1/7 divided by four is going to be one of these 28 sections. This right over here is one over 28. This is 1/28. Let's do another example. We're told use the number
line below to help visualize 1/5 being divided by three. As we go from zero to
one on the number line, you can divide it into five
equal sections where that's 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, and of course 5/5 is equal to one, but we want 1/5 divided by three, so we took the section from zero to 1/5 and we divided it into
three equal sections, and so the first of those sections, this one right over here, that would be 1/5 divided by three. What is this going to be equal to? Pause this video again and see
if you can figure that out. The key realization is when
we divided each of the fifths into three more equal sections, we can now think of each of
these steps as a fifteenth because now we have one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 equal sections between zero and one, and where did that 15 come from? We had five equal
sections and then we split each of those five into
three more equal sections so five times three is 15. This right over here is 1/15, this is 2/15, this is 3/15, which is equivalent to 1/5 and we can keep going on and on and on, but the key realization
here is if I take that first 1/5 and if I divide it
into three equal sections and I go only as far as that
first of the three equal sections, that is going to be
1/15, 1/15 and we are done.