第三课Fractions Are Division
So far we’ve learned how fraction represents parts of things,and we’ve learned how to do simple mathwith those parts, but if we want to really understand how fractions work,we need to start thinging them in a new way. We need to learn what fractions really are.
A fraction is just a Number that is written like a division problem.
When you first learn about division,you usually see a division written like this:
That symbol in the middle just means divide this number by that number.
Then you learn to write the division problem in a different way,like this:
It’s the same division problem,it just uses a different symbol to tell us to divide.
Some of you who use computers a lot might think the division like this:
Now that slash is just another way to write the division symbol.This one is interesting. Watch what happens when we rearrange it. Look familiar? Yeap. It’s a division problem that looks like a fraction. That’s because fraction really is a division problem,but we treated ike a number. The line between the top and bottome numbers is just another way of writing the division symbol.The top number is the number being divided up,we call it the numerator. The bottom number is the number we are dividing by,and we call it the denominator.
Now let’s look at some of the common fractions that you already familiar with and think of them as division problems.
For example,one-half or one over two,is really just one divided by two. The fraction two-third really means two divided by three.
Thinking about fractions like little division problems might seem strange to some of you,especially because these division problems show smaller numbers being divided by larger numbers. You may not have seen them before.You might not even thought it was possible.But you can divide a smaller number by a bigger one.It just means that the answer you’ll get is smaller than one.
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