Word Problems in Fractions 2

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Multiplication 

Multiplication problems are more realistic, as long as we use simple fractions. We saw that the subtraction problem in the previous chapter would be more realistic as a multiplication problem. The problem to illustrate &frac34; X &frac12; can be restated as shown below.

Ram&rsquo;s mother bought a chocolate bar and gave him 3/4thof the cake to take to school. Ram gave away half his share to his friends. How much of the original chocolate does he have for himself?

Solution – Assume that the bar had 8 portions. He took 6 pieces to school. He gave 3 (1/2 of 6) portions to his friends and so he had 3 portions for himself. So he had 3/8 th of the original chocolate bar for himself.

Division

Let us take &frac34; &divide; 1/8. A typical problem would be as follows.

Ram&rsquo;s mother gave him a packet of toffees. She gave him 3/4thof the packet. He took it to school and gave some of his friends 1/8thof the original packet each. How many friends got toffees from him?

Solution – Let us assume that the packet contained 24 toffees. So Ram got 18 (3/4thof 24) toffees to take to school. He gave his friends 3 toffees (1/8thof 24) each. Hence 6 friends (18 &divide; 3) got toffees from him. Hence &frac34; &divide; 1/8 should be 6. Applying the fraction division procedure also we get the answer as 6.

We can see that such a real life situation is very unrealistic.

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