Question #8392f

1 Answer
Apr 24, 2017

35 5/8 "pounds of grapefruit are ripe"

Explanation:

Ok, I want you to think of this first.
If a case of grapefruit weighs 8/8 pounds and 1/8 is NOT ripe, that means that what IS ripe is whatever I have MINUS what is not ripe.

So,

8/8 "pounds of grapefruit" - 1/8 "of grapefruit that is not ripe" =

7/8 "of ripe grapefruit"


Now to begin your problem, first we should convert that mixed fraction back to an improper fraction.

35 3/4

We do this by multiplying the whole number with the denominator

35 * 4 = 140

and then adding the numerator to that number

140 + 3 = 143

and finish by copying our original denominator

So now we have 143/4

Next we need to realize that we need to remove 1/8 of grapefruit that is not ripe from our 143/4 pounds of grapfruit. We need to have equal denominators so we can subtract. In this case we can get equal denominators by multiply the denominator in 143/4 by 2. Remember whatever we do to the denominator we have to do to the numerator.

(143 * 2) / (4 * 2) ---> (286) / (8)

Now we have equal denominators and we can subtract our 1/8 of grapefruit that is not ripe

(286) / (8) - (1) / (8) = 285/8

The method I like to use to convert improper fraction to mixed fraction is

  1. Divide to see how many times the denominator fits into the numerator:
    285 -: 8 = 35 <--- "This is our whole number"
  2. Multiply that number by the denominator:
    35 * 8 = 280
  3. Subtract that number from our original numerator to get our remainder:
    285 - 280 = 5"<--- "This is our remainder"
  4. Put our remainder in the numerator and copy our new denominator along with our whole number:
    35 5/8