Your question would be properly asked, about dividing by a number that is less than one.
Let's take the number 10 for example.
10 = 10/1
How many ones are in ten?
Answer: 10.
How about this: 10/.5
How many halves are in ten?
Answer: 20
How about this: 10/.1
How many tenths are in ten?
Answer: 100
So, the smaller the divisor, the more of them there are in the answer. Maybe I should have used ONE as an example. Think about it:
1/1 = ?
1/.5 = ?
1/.25 = ?
1/.1 = ?
1/.01 = ?
1/.001 = ?
Now the other part of your question.
Reciprocals.
The reciprocal of .5 is 2.
.5 = 1/2 and 2 = 2/1
The reciprocal of 1/2 is 2/1
1 divided by .5 (which is 1/2) is the same as 1 times 2 (which is 2/1).
I'm curious how old you are?
"GCSE" and "maths" are British terms.
I'm American. I'm trying to compare your age to my age when I learned this in school, half a century ago.
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Shelia say: 0...2 is a decimal equivalent of 1/5... so let's say you had.........
30 / 0...2
well, 30 / 0...2 is the same as 30 / (1/5)... when you divide by a real number, you are multiplying by its reciprocal, so for this example you would proceed:
30 / 0...2 = 30 / (1/5) = 30 * 5 = 150...
another way to do this is to just shift the decimal point one spot right in both the divisor (0...2 becomes 2) and the dividend (30 becomes 300)... there, all you have to deal with are whole numbers...
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nbsale say: Let's look at the basics.
Every non-zero number has a multiplicative inverse. The inverse of x is 1/x.
When you multiply a number by it's inverse, you get 1. x(1/x) = 1. That's the definition of the inverse.
Dividing by a number is DEFINED as multiplying by the inverse. That's why when you divide by a fraction, you multiply by the inverse of the fractions.
12 / (2/3) is just 12 X (3/2) = 18
Now, 0.2 is 1/5, so dividing by 1/5 = multiplying by 5/1 = 5.
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ProfRay say: in general a/(c/d) = a × (d/c)
If c/d < 1, the d/c > 1
Yes it is that simple.
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Katy M say: If you are making a pie and you need 5 apples to make a pie and have ten apples, you can only make 2 because 10 divided by 5 is 2.
However, if youa re making a pie and you need .2 apples to make a pie, and you have one apple you can make 5 pies, because 1 divided by .2 is 5.
Hope that helped.
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