Alright, so now let's do a quick review on simplifying and comparing fractions. First, let's do some simplifying. I've got some steps here that make simplifying fractions a little easier. The first thing we want to do is 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 going to 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. 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 of the end. So you could take like a 10 divided by 50, you can slash those zeros and be left with a 1 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 4/3 now. Generally, when you've got a 2 or a 3, something like that in the denominator, you're done. You can also tell 4/3 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. 4 over 3 is the simplified fraction.
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 5 over 10. 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 two times. 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 1 over 2. So now we're at half. I don't think we can simplify from there. We've got a 1 in the numerator. That's a good sign that we're done.
So let's move on to the next one here. We've got 9 over 36. So in this case, Sri Lanka was affected by the crisis. We tried 2, and it doesn't work, and then we tried 3. We'll see that 9 divided by 3 works. 36 divided by 3 works. So let's go ahead and do it. 9 divided by 3, 36 divided by 3, and we're going to get 3 over 12. Now we can see if we're done. 2 doesn't seem like it's going to work, but 3 does go into 3, and 3 goes into 12 as well. So let's go ahead and divide by 3 again. We're going to get 1, 12 divided by 3 is 4. You're going to get 1 fourth as the answer there. We can't simplify that anymore, and if you were a little savvier, you might have noticed that 936, you could divide by 9 with both of them. Hey, if you notice that go ahead and do it. 9 divided by 9 is going to give us 1. 36 divided by 9 is going to give us 4. It's just a shortcut to the final answer. There's not really a wrong way to do it. I like to go with the easy numbers and just keep doing it until I can't anymore, but you just follow your method. So let's go ahead and do this next one here.
21100 divided by 140, and the first thing I notice is I can cut these zeros off the back of it, right, and be left with 210 over 14. There's not another zero on the denominator, so I can't do the zero slashing again. So now it's a matter of finding the correct common factor. So we got 210/14. I see 2 even numbers, so I can just divide by 2 here, but what I'm also noticing is I see the 14 and the 21 there on the numerator. I think that there's a 7 that can work in this situation, so I'm going to try 7 and see what I get. So 210 divided by 7, sure enough, it does work. So this is a quicker way to get to a smaller number. I could have also used 2 at this point, but then it would have left me with some other numbers, and I would have probably had to simplify again. So let's see what this gets us to. So I'm going to divide by 7 here. Divide by 7. So 210 divided by 7 is going to be 30, and 14 divided by 7 is 2. So notice this didn't even get us to the end answer, actually, because what I see is 2 even numbers here. 30 divided by 2, I can divide both of those by 2, and I'm going to get 15 over 1, and when you have a 1 in the denominator, 15 over 1, that's the same as saying 15. So our answer there is 15. There's no fraction left at the end. A good trick for these as well is you can just go ahead and put the whole thing into your calculator, 21100 divided by 140, and see what comes out. Apparently, 140 is a common factor of 21100, so we could have just divided both by 140 right from the start. Cool. Let's try this last one.
128 divided by 1024. In this situation, I see 2 even numbers again. Right? These numbers look a little funkier, so I'm just going to go ahead and use my number 2 and divide both of those by 2. It's going to get me to 64 over 512. Well, I see 2 even numbers again, so I'm going to do it again. Divided by 2, divided by 2, so that's going to get me 32 divided by 256. Alright. So this looks like it could keep going here. Let's divide by 2 again, and I'm going to get 16 over 128. Let me get out of the way here because it looks like we're going to keep going. Man, at this point, it looks like we can divide by 2 again and again. Let me see if 16 is a common factor at this point. Point. I'm going to do 16, 128 divided by 16 and see if that'll get us an even number, and it does. It gets us 8. So I know that 16 is a common factor of both, I'm going to divide both by 16. So there was probably another one that I could have done even earlier, but this is where I finally drew the line and was like hey. There's got to be an easier way. So I'm going to get 1 over 8. We can't simplify that anymore. Our final answer is going to be 1 eighth. Right? So the trick here, right, use those common factors, try and see when things are divisible by 2, when things are divisible by 3 or 5, right, and we are going to get to a simplified fraction. Cool. So let's move on to the next video.
