Question

What is 0.8 times 1.3?

Answer 1

Hint: First understand the arithmetic operation that the term ‘times’ represents. Now, assume the given numbers as x and y respectively. Remove the decimal point by multiplying these numbers with 10. Take the product of 8 and 13 to simplify, finally divide both the sides with 100 and take the decimal point two digits towards the left to get the answer.

Complete step-by-step solution:
Here we have been asked to find the value of the sentence ‘0.8 times 1.3’. First we need to understand the meaning of the term ‘times’ and the arithmetic operation it represents.
Now, in mathematics the word ‘times’ means product or multiplication of two numbers. So, in the above question we need to multiply the two decimal numbers 0.8 and 1.3. Let us remove the decimal point first to make the product easier. Assuming the numbers 0.8 and 1.3 as x and y respectively, we can see that there is only one digit after the decimal point in both x and y so we need to multiply both the numbers with 10 to remove the decimal point. Therefore we get,
$\Rightarrow 10x=8.........\left( i \right)$
$\Rightarrow 10y=13........\left( ii \right)$
Multiplying relation (i) and (ii) we get,
$\begin{align}
  & \Rightarrow \left( 10x \right)\left( 10y \right)=8\times 13 \\
 & \Rightarrow 100xy=104 \\
\end{align}$
Dividing both the sides with 100 we get,
$\Rightarrow xy=\dfrac{104}{100}$
Now, to write the fraction into decimal numbers again we need to take the decimal point two digits to the left of the number in the numerator because the denominator is of the form ${{10}^{2}}$. So we get,
$\Rightarrow xy=1.04$
Hence, the required product is 1.04.

Note: You may note the above process to find the product of two decimal numbers. The solving purpose to remove the decimal point is that we can take the product of two integers easily without thinking about the decimal point. Remember the general rule for the conversion of a fraction into a decimal point. Also, remember some mathematical terms representing different operations.