Hello all,
Since we did not quite get to everything yesterday due to some mis-communication on my part, I am essentially making yesterday’s homework tonight’s homework. Sorry about that!
Today we talked about equivalent fractions, and why we might want to express a fraction in a simplified form, or with a different denominator. Essentially simplified fractions are usually easier to understand and visualize for us. It can be easier to see in our minds something like 1/2 as opposed to 34/68. It might also make fractions easier to compare.
For instance, let’s pretend that you were offered either 1 piece from a pizza that was cut into 4 equal pieces, or 2 pieces from a pizza that was cut into 7 equal pieces. So essentially you were offered 1/4th of a pizza or 2/7ths of a pizza. Which do you choose?
It might be difficult to visualize which is larger or smaller in this case. But we can find equivalent fractions for 1/4 and 2/7 so that they both have common denominators, or have been split into the same number of pieces.
In order to do this, we can find a common denominator that we can convert each of our fractions into. In this case we chose 28 as our common denominator.
In order to convert 1/4 to 28ths, we multiply by a form of one. If you remember, multiplying by 1 will not change the value of a number. The form of one we chose was 7/7, as this will give us a fraction with a denominator of 28. If we multiply 1/4 by 7/7 we end up with 7/28.
So 1/4 = 7/28
In the same vein, we multiply 2/7 by 4/4, and find that 2/7 is equivalent to 8/28
So 2/7 = 8/28
We would want, therefore, to take the 2 pieces!
*whew* if you’re still reading this, kudos to you.
In science, we are talking about motion, and forces. We had a very interesting discussion today about what let’s us move about on the Earth, and why we would NOT be able to move about quite so easily in space.
Space is not like swimming, where you can push on the water to propel yourself. In space, there’s nothing to ‘push’ against to move yourself forward. Without that force, you’d just be stuck in one spot, forever!
So we have two worksheets, dealing with equivalent fractions, and then using equivalent fractions to convert fractions to decimals (hint: convert it to x/100 first!).
As always, we have our 35 minutes of reading, and they should have read up through chapter 14 by tomorrow in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. We will finish it by the end of this week!
We actually finished the personification worksheet in class, so no worries about that.
tldr;
2 math worksheets
35 mins reading (to include ch 14 in TLTW&TW)
See you all tomorrow!