Question

How do you find the reciprocal of $12$?

Answer 1

Hint: To find the reciprocal of the given number, we simply divide $1$ by that number, after using the definition of reciprocal.

Complete step by step solution:
In this question, we are asked to find the reciprocal of a whole number, which is $12$.
Reciprocal of a number simply means to divide $1$ by that number, that is: $\dfrac{{\text{1}}}{{{\text{number}}}}$

Therefore reciprocal of the given number is: $\dfrac{1}{{12}}$

Note: The word reciprocal comes from the Latin word ‘reciprocus’ meaning returning. It is also known as ‘Multiplicative Inverse’.
 In case of any fraction, the reciprocal basically means to interchange the position of the numerator and the denominator. For example if we have the fraction as$\dfrac{a}{b}$ , then its reciprocal will be $\dfrac{b}{a}$ .
We always assume any whole number to have the denominator as $1$ , So in essence we are simply just interchanging the numerator and denominator as we do in the case of reciprocating fractions.
Some common properties of reciprocal are:
Every number has a reciprocal except zero. This is because $\dfrac{1}{0}$ becomes undefined or infinity.
If we multiply any number, by its reciprocal, we will always get the answer as $1$. For example if we multiply $6$ with its reciprocal, we find $6 \times \dfrac{1}{6} = 1$ as the two $6’s$ will cancel each other out.
Other examples of reciprocation are:
Let us take the number $5$. The reciprocal of it will be $\dfrac{1}{5}$ . We can further express this fractional form in decimal form also as $0.2$. All fractions can be expressed in decimal forms.