Question

What is the opposite and reciprocal of 1?

Answer 1

Hint: To find the opposite, you need to find the additive inverse of 1. Additive inverse of a number is a number which when added with the original number gives 0. Therefore, you have to find the number which added with 1 produces 0. That is the opposite. To find the reciprocal you need to just divide 1 with the given number. Or reciprocal is also the multiplicative inverse which is a number when multiplied with the original number produces 1.

Complete step by step solution:
Here is the step wise solution.
The first part of the question is to find the opposite of 1. To find the opposite, we need to find the additive inverse of one. Additive inverse of a number is a number which when added with the original number gives 0.
Therefore, for 1, if we add -1, it gives 0.
$\Rightarrow 1 + \left(-1\right) = 0$
Therefore, the opposite of 1 is -1.

The next part of the question, is to find the reciprocal of one. To find this, we need to find the multiplicative inverse of 1. Multiplicative inverse of a number is a number which when multiplied with the original number produces 1.
Since,
$\Rightarrow 1 \times 1 = 1$
Therefore, the reciprocal of 1 is 1.
Therefore, we get the final answer of the question as the opposite of 1 is -1 and the reciprocal of 1 is 1.

Note: You have to have the knowledge of additive inverse and the multiplicative inverse to solve the question. The reciprocal of a number can also be found by just dividing one with the number which you want the reciprocal of. The reciprocal of a reciprocal of a number gives back the number.