Dividing Decimals by Decimals What about when we have to divide a decimal number by another decimal number?
Sonia ran 1.7 laps of the park and a total of 6.205km. How long was each lap of the park?
To work this out, we have to divide 1.7 into 6.205. To make it easier for ourselves, we can multiply both numbers by 10. 1.7 × 10 = 17
6.205 × 10 = 62.05
Because we’ve done the same thing to both numbers, our fi nal answer will still be the same except now we’re dividing by 17 and not by a number with a decimal in it. So we can do as we did before.
17
03.65 62.05
– 51.00 11.05
0 1
– 10.20 00.85
– 00.85 00.00
So each lap of the park was 3.65km long.
1. Now try these – remember to multiply both numbers by either 10 or 100 to make sure you are dividing by a whole number. Check your answers with a calculator.
a) 4.524 ÷ 2.6 d) 64.53 ÷ 2.7
b) 6.516 ÷ 0.18 e) 15.732 ÷ 0.36
Puzzler
Jane was practising for the Dublin marathon. The week before the marathon she ran 0.875 of the 40km course in a time of 2 hours 55 minutes. Running at the same speed, how long would it take her to complete the full course?