Question

If $40$ sweets were divided amongst $5$ children, what fraction of sweets did each child get?

Answer 1

Hint: First, we will define what a fraction is. Then, we will find the answer of the question by dividing the total number of sweets by the number of children as given in the question, and hence, we will be getting the fraction of sweets each child gets.

Complete step by step answer:

First of all, we will understand that what is a fraction? So a fraction is a number we need for measuring. For counting, we have the natural numbers: $1,2,3,4.....$. But when we need to measure something, for example, length, it will not always be a whole number. Therefore, we need numbers that are less than $1$ that means the numbers that are the parts of $1$ : half of $1$, a third, a fifth, etc.
In simpler terms, let’s take one-third for an example. It is represented as: $\dfrac{1}{3}$ , which means 1 out of 3. The numerator of $\dfrac{1}{3}$ is $1$ and the denominator is $3$. They are called the terms of the fraction. The denominator shows the number of equal parts into which number $1$ has been divided. The numerator shows that how many of those parts we selected. For example, in the example above $\dfrac{1}{3}$, since the denominator is $3$, $1$ is divided into $3$equal parts and we selected one part out of it as shown in the figure below:

So, now we are given $40$ sweets and then they are divided amongst $5$ children, and therefore we will divide: $\dfrac{40}{5}=8$.
Hence, each child gets $8$ sweets.
Note:
 Although, it is asked in the question to find the fraction of sweets distributed we get a whole number as our answer. Remember that, a whole number can be written as a fraction such as $8=\dfrac{8}{1}$ and hence it means that each kid will get a total of $8$ whole pieces.