Question

The length of a rectangle is 5/6 feet. The width is 3/8 feet. How much greater is the length of the rectangle than the width? A.1/12 ft B.1/4 ft C.11/24 ft D.1/2 ft

Answer 1

The way you figure this out is by taking the length (5/6) and subtracting the width (3/8). in order to subtract fractions, they need a common denominator. the number 24 works well for this as 8*3=24 and 6*4=24. in order to keep everything equivalent, we can only multiply by 1, but we can rewrite 1 by taking a number over itself, such as 3/3 and 4/4.
 
so if we take 5/6 and multiply by 4/4 (which is still equal to 1) we get 20/24.  

next we multiply 3/8 by 3/3 (which is still equal to 1) we get 9/24. 

now that we have a common denominator, we can simply subtract them. 20/24-9/24=11/24

this means our answer is C. 11/24 ft