How do you simplify #8/12+1/6#?

1 Answer

#5/6#

Explanation:

We can do this in a couple of ways. The trick to this is that we need the denominators to be the same. (Remember that the denominator tells you how many pieces something is divided into - and so having 2 identical pizzas divided into 12 pieces for the one and 6 pieces into the other won't give us identically sized slices. We need to know that we are working with the same size!)

Let's do it one way - increase the 6 to a 12:

#8/12+1/6#

#8/12+1/6(1)#

#8/12+1/6(2/2)#

#8/12+2/12#

#10/12#

#(2xx5)/(2xx6)#

#(2/2)(5/6)#

#(1)(5/6)#

#5/6#

We could also do it the other way and reduce the denominator 12 fraction to a 6 first:

#8/12+1/6#

#(2xx4)/(2xx6)+1/6#

#(2/2)(4/6)+1/6#

#(1)(4/6)+1/6#

#4/6+1/6#

#5/6#