Okay, so I was messing around with some math problems the other day, just for fun, you know? And I stumbled upon this one: 3 divided by 2/5. It looked simple enough, but I wanted to make sure I did it right, so I decided to break it down step by step.
Getting Started
First, I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. I like to write things out, it helps me think clearer. I wrote down the problem nice and big:
3 ÷ (2/5)
The Process
Now, I remembered something important about dividing fractions – you actually end up multiplying. You flip the second fraction, the one you’re dividing by, and then you multiply it with the first number. It’s like a little math trick!
So, I flipped 2/5 to become 5/2. The problem now looked like this:
3 x (5/2)
Next, I thought of the number 3 as a fraction too, like 3/1. This made it easier to see how to multiply across.
- I did Top times top: 3 times 5, which is 15.
- Then I multiplied the bottoms: 1 x 2 equals to 2.
This gave me the new fraction: 15/2.
The Final Result
Finally, I did the division of 15/2 to simplified it, and realized that 2 can fit into 15 for 7 times with a little bit extra leftover. This means that 2 times 7 equal to 14, so 15-14 shows that the little extra leftover is 1. I can either get the final result of a mixed number with 7 and a half(1/2), or just get the decimal number of 7.5.
And there you have it! 3 divided by 2/5 is 7.5. It’s always fun to go back to basics and work through these problems. It reminds me of how much I enjoy the little “aha!” moment when it all clicks into place.