Question

Betsy is making a quilt and starts out with 1 (2)/(5) yards of fabric and she uses ( 3)/(7) of a yard. How much fabric does she have left?

Answer 1

Answer:
`(34)/(35)`

Explanation:

We can solve this problem using subtraction, but first we need to turn the mixed numbers into fractions.

`1(2)/(5) -(3)/(7)`

`(7)/(5)-(3)/(7)`

Then we need to give the fractions the same denominators (bottom number), we can do this by multiplying each fraction by a fractional form of 1 (ex:
`(5)/(5)`):

`(7)/(5)((7)/(7)) -(3)/(7)((5)/(5))`

`(49)/(35)-(15)/(35)`

Now we can subtract the terms because they share a common denominator:

`(49)/(35)-(15)/(35)=(34)/(35)`