Question

How do you find the reciprocal of $\dfrac{3}{8}$ ?

Answer 1

Hint: We have to find the reciprocal of $\dfrac{3}{8}$ . We know that the reciprocal of a number is 1 divided by that number. Using this concept, we will find the reciprocal of the given number, which is in the form of a fraction.

Complete step by step answer:
There are basically 3 ways to get the reciprocal, they are as follows-
(1)Reciprocal of a number-To find the reciprocal of a number, divide 1 by the number.
For example: Reciprocal of 6 will be $\dfrac{1}{6}$ .
(2) Reciprocal of a decimal- To find the reciprocal of a decimal, we need to do the same as we did in point (1).
(3) Reciprocal of a fraction- To get the reciprocal of a fraction we need to switch the places of numerator and denominator, i.e. the top and bottom terms of the fraction.
In this question, we are going to use the third way to get the solution of the given question.
So, we will switch the places of numerator=3 and denominator=8 with each other to get the reciprocal of $\dfrac{3}{8}$ .
So, the answer is $\dfrac{8}{3}$ .

Note:
In Mathematics, reciprocal is simply defined as the inverse of a number, fraction or decimal. When we multiply a number with its reciprocal we get the value 1, thus, it is also known as multiplicative inverse.
Here also, when we multiply \[\dfrac{3}{8}\] with $\dfrac{8}{3}$ we get 1. This implies that our solution is the multiplicative inverse of \[\dfrac{3}{8}\] .
Do not confuse multiplicative inverse with additive inverse, as additive inverse gives the value zero on adding t to its parent number.