Question

A rope climbing instructor has 3145 meters of rope to divide among 40 students. Each student will get an equal amount of rope. What length of rope does the instructor give to each student? Enter your answer, as a simplified mixed number, in the box.

Answer 1

You would first divide 3145 by 40.

40 will go into 314, seven times. So you subtract 280 from 314. This gives you 34. Since 40 cannot go into 34, you drop down your remaining 5 in the original number. This leaves you with 345 to be divided by 40. The closest you can get is 320. This being said you will subtract 320 from 345. You now have an answer of 78 R 25. To turn it into a mixed number, the whole number is 78, the numerator (top fraction number) is 25, and the denominator (bottom fraction number) is 40.

78  25
      ---
      40
To simplify you simply divide 25 by 5 and 40 by 5
25/5= 5
40/5=8

So your answer is:

78    5
        --
        8