Question

Tom is making meatloaf with 3/4 pound of turkey and 5/6 pound of ground beef what is the least common multiple he should use to find the total number of pounds of meat?

Answer 1

The least common multiple that he should use to find the total number of meat is 36.

`1` `7/12` or `19/12` , both are equivalent to each other is how many pound of meat Tom needs.

Explanation:

Ok so we have two fractions, so we need to find a common denominator. The only common denominator that 4 and 6 have at the least is 36. So let do that.

`3/4` `*` `9/9` = `27/36`

So as you can see, we need a number that gives us on 36 on the denominator but we also need to times it on the numerator as-well.

Let do the same thing to `5/6`

`5/6` `*` `6/6` = `30/36`

So now since we have common denominator, we can add them.

`27/36` `+` `30/36` = `57/36`

So we now have a number in the numerator that is higher than the denominator. We need to cancel out the common factor on both the numerator and denominator.

36:
- 1, 36
- 2, 18
- 3, 19
- 4, 9
- 6, 6

57:
- 1, 57
- 3, 19

So we now have the list of common factor for both numbers. So we see that 1 and 3 are the common factors. So we multiply `3*1*` = 3. So we divide both the numerator and denominator by 3 which gives us: `19/12` or we can reduce it to a mixed number form which is `1` `7/12`