2.8 Dividing Fractions

Introduction

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Unit 6

Math Basics  >  Unit 2 Fractions and Decimals  >  Lesson 2.8 Dividing Fractions

Video Lesson

Click play to watch the video and answer the questions for points!

Practice Activity

Divide the fractions then click on your answer.

+ Video Transcript

In this lesson we're going to look at dividing fractions. Here's our first example. Two fifths divided by three sevenths. Now, in this lesson, we're going to focus on the shortcut way of dividing fractions. And just remember, the shortcut involves keep, change, flip, then multiply. So just kind of memorize that. Now the keep part refers to keeping the first fraction the same. Okay? So you would just copy that first fraction over, don't change anything there. The change refers to changing the division sign to a multiplication sign. And then the next part, flip, means that we're going to flip the second fraction. So three over seven flips to become seven over three. Now, we did learn a term for this. We call it the reciprocal. So we're really taking the reciprocal of that divisor, the second fraction, but you can just remember it as flipping it. And now notice we have a multiplication problem here. So we just multiply across just like we do with any type of problem that involves multiplying fractions. So if we multiply cross, we get two times seven equals 14 for our numerator and our denominator, five times three equals 15. Our final answer is 14/15. So just remember, with this strategy, we're multiplying the dividend by the reciprocal of the divisor, or in other words, follow keep, change, flip, then multiply. And then remember to change any mixed fractions to improper fractions first. And if the answer needs to be simplified, make sure that you simplify the answer.

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