Alright, so now let's do a quick review on simplifying and comparing fractions. So first let's do some simplifying. I've got some steps here that make simplifying fractions a little easier. So the first thing we want to do is we want to find a common factor. When I say common factor, it's something that both the numerator and denominator can divide by this number, and then we're gonna divide. And you're like numerator, denominator, what are these things again? The numerator is the top part of the fraction. The denominator is the bottom part of the fraction. And so what we want to do is we're going to want to keep finding a common factor and keep dividing until we can't do it anymore. We'll either end up with a whole number like 2, 3, 6, right? We'll end up with a number or we'll just have a fraction that we can't simplify anymore. And a pro tip here that I've added is that most numbers are going to be divisible by 2 or 3 or, you know, 5, but generally if you see 2 even numbers, it's a good sign that you just divide everything by 2. Right? So even if they're kind of weird numbers, if they're both even, you have the ability to just divide both of them by 2.
And another one, if both of the numbers end in a 0, so if you have let's say 10 divided by 50, you can take the zeros off the end. So you could take like a 10 divided by 50, you can slash those zeros and be left with a one-fifth. Right? The idea there is that the common factor is 10, and you're dividing the top by 10 and the bottom by 10 to get to that, but that's just a quick and easy way to do it.
Cool. So let's go ahead and practice some. Again, what I want you to do is just pause this video, try these out, and then we'll solve them together. And if you want, we can do the first one together before you pause. So let's go ahead and do that. So the first one here, we've got 8 over 6, so 8 sixths. How do we simplify this? Well, when I see this, I see 2 even numbers, so I immediately think I can divide both of these by 2, and that is what I'm going to do. I'm going to take 8 divided by 2, and I'm going to get 4 and 6 divided by 2 and I'm going to get 3. So we've got four-thirds now. Generally, when you've got a 2 or a 3, something like that in the denominator, you're done. You can also tell in four-thirds there's not a number that both can be divided by right. You're already pretty small. You can't divide 3 by 2 or you know, 4 by 3. This is it. This is your answer right here. Four over three is the simplified fraction. Right? Let's try the next one.
We've got 120 divided by 140. So the first thing you should notice is that we've got 2 zeros here, right, right at the end. So that's the first thing we can do. We can chop off those zeros, and we will be left with 12 over 14. Now the question is are we done yet? So what I see is 2 even numbers, 12 and 14. That immediately signals to me that I can divide by 2 and simplify it. So if I divide by 2 the top and divide by 2 on the bottom, we are going to be left with 6 over 7. So these two numbers, 6 and 7, again, there's not anything we can do to simplify this. That is going to be our final answer. There's not a common factor between those 2. Let's try the next one.
25 over 50. So this one, you don't see 2 even numbers. That's not going to work. You go to your calculator, you try 25 divided by 3, and you're still not getting anywhere. 25 divided by 4, this is kind of the process I would try until you get to 25 divided by 5. Right? Oh, here we go. 25 divided by 5 works. 50 divided by 5 works, so we're going to go ahead and divide by 5 on this one, and we are going to get 25 divided by 5 is 5, 50 divided by 5 is 10, so we're going to have five-tenths. Now this might look like a final answer but it's not yet. So let's see if there's anything else we can divide by, and we've got 5 goes into 5 one time, and 10 goes into 5 one time or two_times here. So actually 5 is now a common factor of both of them, right? So 5 divided by 5 and 10 divided by 5, and we're going to get one-half. So now we're at half. I don't think we can simplify from there. We've got a 1 in the numerator...
