Question

Mike poors 12/8 cups of orange juice into serving glasses each glass holds 3/4 cups how many glasses can he fill use a common denominator to devide

Answer 1

The instruction to "use a common denominator to divide" may be counter-intuitive to someone taught to "invert and multiply."

To find the number of glasses, we divide the amount of juice by the glass size. The divisor is the glass size, and we want to have a common divisor with the juice quantity.

We can remove a factor of 2 from the numerator and denominator of the juice quantity to give it a denominator of 4, in common with the glass size.

number of glasses = (quantity of juice) / (glass size)

number of glasses = (6/4 cups)/(3/4 cups)

Factoring (1/4 cups) from numerator and denominator, we have

number of glasses = 6/3

number of glasses = 2