Have a stick 3 4/5 and one 3 1/2

Question

What do I cut off to make the longer one equal to the shorter stick?

Answer 1

To solve this question you first need to get them into improper fractions.

3(4/5) as an improper fraction would be 19/5. Take the denominator (5) and multiply it by the whole number (3) and then add the numerator (4).

3(1/2) would be 7/2 as an improper fraction.

Now I want to get them into common denominators so the least common denominator would be 10 between (19/5) and (7/2).

We are going to multiply (19/5) by (2/2) to get (38/10) and multiply (7/2) by (5/5) to get (35/10).

This means that the 3(4/5) stick is the longer stick. So in order to get the longer stick equal to the shorter stick you will have to subtract them: (38/10)-(35/10) = 3/10.

So you will have to cut off 3/10 of the longer stick to make it equal to the shorter stick.