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Hi everyone! Today we're going to talk about division. In math, division means splitting
into equal parts or groups. You probably use division a lot in your day-to-day life, even
if you don't realize it. Let's imagine there are twelve cookies, and four people want to
share them. How many cookies should each person get if the cookies are shared equally? To
get the answer, you must divide the cookies four ways. 12 divided by 4 equals 3. Each
person should get three cookies.
There are three different ways to write division problems that you might see in your math work.
Don't get confused! All of these ways mean the same thing.
The three numbers in a division problem each have a special name. The number being divided
is called the dividend. The number that the dividend is divided by is called the divisor.
And the result of the division is called the quotient.
Division is the opposite of multiplication. If you know a multiplication fact, you can
figure out some division facts.
Let's look at some examples.
First, let's look at 15 divided by 3. Fifteen, divided into three equal parts, is five.
3 x 5 = 15, and 15 divided by 3 is 5. You can also divide 15 by 5. 15 divided by 5 is 3.
You can see that these three numbers will give us four related facts. If you can remember
one of these facts, it's easy to figure out the answer to the others.
Next lets take 32 divided by 4. If we divide 32 into four equal parts, how many are in
each group? 8. 32 divided by 4 equals 8. We can double check this and see if it makes
sense by taking 8 times 4. 8 x 4 = 32, so we know that 8 is the right answer to the
question 32 divided by 4.
How else could we divide 32? Well, because 32 divided by 4 equals 8, we know that we
could divide 32 by 8. 32 divided by 8 equals 4. Remember our related facts?
We could also divide 32 into two equal groups of 16, or into 16 groups of 2, and those facts
are related as well.
Let's look at one more problem. 6 divided by 3. If we divide 6 things into three equal
groups, each group will only have two things in it. 6 divided by three is two. We can check
that by looking at the related multiplication facts: three times what equals six? Two.
3 x 2 = 6. So 6 divided by 3 = 2. We can divide 6 by 2 as well: 6 divided by 2 = 3.
Now, what happens if you divide something by 1? Let's try 6 divided by 1. If you have
6 things and divided them into 1 group, how many are in that group? 6. Any number divided
by 1 is the same number you started with.
What if we divide a number by itself, like 6 divided by 6? If you divide 6 things into
6 equal groups, how many things are in each group? 1. Anything divided by itself equals
1. Of course, you can check this, too, by looking at the related facts.
I hope this helped you understand how division works. Good-bye till next time!