Question

Jill is baking a pumpkin pie. The recipe calls for 4 ⅓ cups of flour, but Jill has 2 ⅘ cups. How many cups of flour does Jill need?

Answer 1

1 8/15

Explanation:

We need to equal the denominators. We have 1/3 and 4/5, and we need to make the bottom numbers equal to each other. The closest common factor is 15 (which we got from 3 x 5). With the denominators solved, we now need to equal out the top numbers, or the numerators. 1 x 5 gives us 5/15, and 4 x 3 gives us 12/15. Then, we need to apply these to each variable. This gives us Jill's 2 12/15th cups of flour, and the recipe's call for 4 5/15 cups. We then subtract these from each other, giving us 1 8/15 cups of flour is needed from Jill.