Alright, so today I decided to actually sit down and work through multiplying 5/6 by 1/2. Sometimes you just gotta do the basics, you know? Get your hands dirty with the simple stuff.
Here’s how I went about it, step-by-step, just jotting down my process.
My Walkthrough
First thing, I looked at the problem laid out: 5/6 times 1/2.
I remembered the rule for multiplying fractions. It’s usually pretty straightforward, which is nice. You don’t need common denominators or anything fancy like when you’re adding them.
You just multiply the top numbers (the numerators) together, and then you multiply the bottom numbers (the denominators) together.
- So, I started with the top parts. That was 5 and 1.
- I multiplied those: 5 times 1. That’s easy, it just equals 5. Okay, so 5 is the top number for my answer.
- Next up, I tackled the bottom numbers. I had 6 and 2 down there.
- I multiplied those together: 6 times 2. That gives you 12. So, 12 is the bottom number for the answer.
Now I just had to put the results together into a new fraction. The new top number is 5, and the new bottom number is 12.
So, that gives me the fraction 5/12.
I took a quick look at 5/12 to see if I could simplify it, you know, make the numbers smaller while keeping the value the same. I checked if 5 and 12 had any common factors other than 1. Let’s see… 5 is only divisible by 1 and 5. And 12 isn’t divisible by 5. So, nope, it looks like 5/12 is already as simple as it gets.
And that was pretty much it. Went through the steps, multiplied the tops, multiplied the bottoms, checked for simplification. Job done. Got 5/12 as the final result. Felt good to just work it out methodically.
