Okay, today I gotta tell you about this thing I did, simplifying 54/9. I was messing around with some numbers and got to thinking, how do I make this fraction smaller? I mean, 54 divided by 9, that just seemed way too big, you know?
So, I remembered this trick from way back when I was in school. It’s all about finding the biggest number that can divide both the top and the bottom of the fraction evenly. That’s called the Greatest Common Factor, or GCF, but let’s not get too fancy with the terms here.
First, I looked at 54 and 9. What number goes into both of them? I started listing out the factors of 9, since it’s the smaller number. You got 1, 3, and 9. Now, which of these also go into 54? I tried dividing 54 by each of them.
- 54 divided by 1 is 54, so that works.
- 54 divided by 3 is 18, so that works too.
- And, 54 divided by 9 is 6. Bingo!
Turns out, 9 is the biggest number that goes into both 54 and 9. So, I divided both the top and the bottom by 9.
Here’s what I did:
- I took 54 and divided it by 9, which gave me 6.
- Then, I took 9 and divided it by 9, which gave me 1.
So, 54/9 simplified is 6/1. And guess what? 6/1 is just 6, right? Because anything divided by 1 is just itself.
So, yeah, 54/9 simplifies to 6.
It’s like magic, turning a big, clunky fraction into a nice, neat whole number. Pretty cool, huh? I just wanted to share this little adventure in number land with you all. Hope you found it as interesting as I did!
