Question

Mr. Patrol is building a small fence around a garden. He purchased a piece of wood that's 8 1/2 feet long. Is each slat is going to be 2 1/3 feet long, how many full pieces can he make from the piece of wood? What he did: 8 1/2 divided by 2 1/2=16/2 x 7x3= 112/6=18 2/3. What was the error? What is the right solution?

Answer 1

Well first he can only make 3 full pieces of wood. The correct way would be dividing 8 1/2 by 2 1/3 to get 51/14, simplifed would be 3 9/14 and sinc e only full pieces its 3. The thing she did wrong was when dividing she converted the mixed fraction wrong when converting it into an improper. 8 1/2 converts to 17/2 not 16/2. 16/2 doesn’t make sense becuase if you covert it back you’d only get 8, theres still a 1/2 in there too, the 1/2 doesn’t just disappears. You gotta multiply the denominator by the whole number then ADD the numerator to it to make the numeratorfor the improper fraction.