ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Fractions Videos 8 videos
¿Piensas que sumar y restar fracciones propias es divertido? Oh, bien, entonces tú has experimentado solamente una fracción de lo divertido que...
Once you're done reducing fractions, you can reuse and recycle them, too.
Dividing fractions just means multiplying the first fraction by the reciprocal of the second fraction. But why do your fractions need dividing to b...
Reducing Fractions 5661 Views
Share It!
Description:
Once you're done reducing fractions, you can reuse and recycle them, too.
Transcript
- 00:07
Reducing Fractions, a la Shmoop. You may not be aware of it, but we have a
- 00:12
serious fraction problem in this country. Every year, thousands of fractions are carelessly
- 00:18
discarded. They make their way into our food and water
- 00:21
supplies… … and pollute our air.
- 00:28
So please – do your part to reduce, reuse and recycle fractions.
Full Transcript
- 00:33
Well… reduce them, anyway. Okay, so reducing fractions may not save the
- 00:38
environment, but it will make your life easier. But how do we reduce a fraction?
- 00:46
In this sense, “reduce” is simply another word for “simplify.”
- 00:52
Say we are given the fraction twenty-four thirty-sixths.
- 00:55
Hopefully we’re not following a recipe, because we might want to buy ourselves a new
- 01:01
cookbook. Basically, we want to find the “equivalent
- 01:04
fraction” with the smallest numbers, so it’s easier for us to wrap our head around
- 01:09
it. Equivalent fractions are fractions that are
- 01:11
exactly equal to one another. For example, three-fourths and six-eighths
- 01:15
are equivalent fractions. If we give you three-fourths of a dollar,
- 01:20
we’d be giving you seventy-five cents. If we give you six-eighths of a dollar, we’d
- 01:25
still be giving you seventy-five cents. Just don’t spend it all in one place
- 01:30
Well, back to our original fraction – twenty-four thirty-sixths.
- 01:36
If we divide both our numerator and denominator in half, we get twelve-eighteenths.
- 01:47
Because we are doing the same thing to the top and bottom, we wind up with an equivalent
- 01:53
fraction. Chop it in half again, and we get six-ninths.
- 01:59
We can no longer divide evenly by two, but we CAN divide by three…
- 02:17
Now that both our numerator and denominator are prime numbers, our reducing days are behind
- 02:24
us.
- 02:24
Looks like the most reduced version of our original fraction is two-thirds.
- 02:31
If you had realized from the beginning that the greatest common factor of 24 and 36 is
- 02:36
12…
- 02:37
…you could have saved yourself a couple of steps.
- 02:42
But you’ll get the hang of it the more you practice.
- 02:47
And we know you’ll practice plenty, because the world’s fractions are counting on you.
- 02:52
Give a hoot. Don’t pollute. Reduce a fraction today.
Related Videos
Worried about adding and subtracting fractions? Never fear. It's so easy that it will only take up a fraction of your time: just use multiplication...
This video explains how to convert between decimals, percents, and fractions. All three of these languages are just different ways of showing parts...
Vamos directo al grano. "." Allí está. Saluda a la coma decimal, su nuevo mejor amigo. Ustedes se ir de compras juntos, pasar el rato en la playa...