Question

A piece of wire 5/4 m long is to be cut into 20 pieces of the same length. What is the length of each piece?Each piece is ____ m long.(Simplify your answer. Type an integer or a fraction.)

Answer 1

When we divide a fraction by a number, that's equivalent to multiplying the first fraction by the inverse of that number.

In this problem, we need to divide the fraction 5/4 by 20. So we obtain:

`(5)/(4)\colon20=(5)/(4)\cdot(1)/(20)`

Now, we need to multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the numerator of the second one, and the denominator of the first fraction by the denominators of the second one:

`(5)/(4)\cdot(1)/(20)=(5\cdot1)/(4\cdot20)=(5)/(80)`

Now, we need to simplify the answer. To do so, we can divide both the numerator and the denominator by 5:

`(5\colon5)/(80\colon5)=(1)/(16)`

Therefore:

Each piece is 1/16 m long.