Question in the description

Question

Emma's garden is 1/5 beans 1/8 peas and 1/2 corn the rest is planted with flowers what fraction is Emma's garden planted with vegetables?are there more flowers or peas in Emma's garden?

Answer 1

1. Find the lowest common multiple (LCM) for the denominators of the fractions of vegetables.

 

1/5 beans, 1/8 peas, 1/2 corn; the least common multiple (LCM) of 5, 8 and 2 is 40.

40 then, is the common denominator for each crop.

 

2. Now, multiply each numerator (1, 1 and 1) by whatever number you must multiply each fraction's original denominator by to get the common denominator of 40.

 

5 (beans denominator) times 8 = 40, so the product of 1 (beans numerator) times 8 becomes the new numerator (8). The new beans fraction, then, is 8/40.

8 (peas denominator) times 5 = 40, so the product of 1 (peas numerator) times 5 becomes the new numerator (5). The new peas fraction then, is 5/40.

2 (corn denominator) times 20 = 40, so the product of 1 (corn numerator) times 20 becomes the new numerator (20). The new corn fraction, then, is 20/40.

 

3. Add the three new fractions: 8/40 + 5/40 + 20/40 = 33/40.

 

4. The total fraction of vegetables is 33/40.

 

5. If the total fraction of vegetables is 33/40, then the fraction of flowers would be 7/40, since the whole garden would be 40/40 of crops (33/40 + 7/40 = 40/40).

 

6. Knowing now that the flowers make up 7/40 of the garden, and knowing from step 2 that the peas make up 5/40 of the garden, we know that there are more flowers than peas (7/40 > 5/40).

Answer 2

The first thing would be to find out how much of the garden is vegetables.

To do that you need to add the areas of all the different vegetables.

1/5 + 1/8 + 1/2  =?

You will need to find a common denominator.  A quick and easy way is to multiply all the denominators.

5 x 8 x 2 =80

Now convert each fraction to a fraction with a denominator or 80.

1/5 = ?/80  ,  1/8 = ?/80  ,  1/2 = ?/80

to do the first one; 5 goes into 80 16 times and 16 times 1= 16

     (the 1 is the denominator of 5 or how many 5ths you have)

second 8 into 80 = 10 times and 10 times 1 = 10

third 2 into 80 = 40 and 40 times 1 = 40

so the fractions to add are

16/80 + 10/80 + 40/80 = 66/80

reduce by ÷ 2 = 33/40 of the garden is vegetables

since 33/40 is more than 1/2 there are more vegetables