By: The very talented and wonderful Mr. Graham and that dumb monkey George
What in the heck is a reciprocal? Anyone? Anyone help me?
George, It’s your cousin Clem. Yeah, it says here a reciprocal is one of two numbers who’s product is one. So you multiply a number by its reciprocal and you get one. Yeah, Yeah, I got this one, I’ll explain it since you ain’t as smart as me.
Oh yeah, and remember a whole number is really that number over 1. So since 6 is really than its reciprocal would be
To find a reciprocal of a fraction, flip the numerator and denominator. So the reciprocal of is
The reciprocal of
When you multiply a number by its reciprocal you get 1.
is
George, do you know why reciprocals are important? Because in order to divide fractions, YOU MULTIPLY BY ITS RECIPROCAL!!!!
4
Instead of dividing, multiply by the reciprocal 1
Reduce using butterfly method
Multiply straight across and we get
If you had to do it by hand, you would move the decimal so that you had a whole number in the divisor. However many places you moved the decimal in the divisor is how many places you would move it in the dividend.
Since we have calculators, enter it into the calculator and get your answer.