Alright, so today I decided to tackle this little thing: 1 divided by 1/5. Sounds simple, right? But I wanted to actually walk through it, step by step, like I really do when I practice stuff.
My Process
First thing, I looked at the problem: 1 ÷ 1/5.
My brain immediately goes to the rule I learned way back. When you divide by a fraction, you actually flip the second number (the fraction) and then multiply. It’s that ‘keep, change, flip’ thing people talk about.
So, let’s break it down:
- Keep the first number. That’s easy, it’s just 1.
- Change the division sign to a multiplication sign. So now we have 1 × …
- Flip the second number (the fraction 1/5). Flipping 1/5 gives you 5/1, which is just 5.
Okay, so after doing that, the problem changed. It became:
1 × 5
Well, that’s much easier to handle! Anything times 1 is just itself.
So, 1 times 5 is simply 5.
Checking My Work (Just to be sure)
I like to think about it in a real-world way sometimes, just to double-check it makes sense. Dividing 1 by 1/5 is like asking, “How many pieces of size 1/5 can I get out of 1 whole thing?”
Imagine I have 1 whole pizza. If I cut it into slices that are each 1/5th of the pizza, how many slices would I have? I’d have 5 slices, right? Because 5 fifths make one whole.
Yeah, that makes sense. So the answer 5 feels right.
So, that was my little practice run for today. Started with 1 divided by 1/5, went through the ‘keep, change, flip’ steps, turned it into 1 times 5, and got the answer 5. Confirmed it by thinking about pizza slices. Done!
