Question

A garden that is 10/3 of an acre is to be divided into 5 equal-size areas. What is the size of each area?

Answer 1

Answer:

2/3 of an acre

Explanation:

To find the size of each area, we divide the area of the garden by 5. This gives

$\frac{10}{3}\div5$

Now at this point we remind ourselves that if we are dividing a fraction by a number, then we can turn the division into multiplication by taking the reciprocal of the number.

The number we are dividing our fraction by in this case is 5. Now, the reciprocal of 5 is 1/5 and so we can write the above as

$\frac{10}{3}\div5\Rightarrow\frac{10}{3}\times\frac{1}{5}$

Multiplying the denominators together gives

$\frac{10}{3}\times\frac{1}{5}=\frac{10}{3\times5}=\frac{10}{15}$

Now dividing both the numerator and the denominator by 5 gives

$\frac{10\div5}{15\div5}=\frac{2}{3}$

Hence,

$\frac{10}{3}\div5=\frac{2}{3}$

Therefore, the size of each area is 2/3 of an acre.