Practise Multiplying Fractions

When multiplying two fractions together there is a simple trick.

 

Multiply the numerators, and multiply the denominators.

 

Example 1:

Notice that 6 and 20 have a common factor of 2? This means that we can divide the numerator and denominator by 2, to simplify the fraction. 

So our final answer is:

 

 

Example 2:

In this scenario, the word of means multiply. So we can rewrite this as:

The second number is an integer, but it may be easier to write it as a fraction, with a denominator of 1. Then we can multiply numerators and denominators, as before:

30 and 8 have a common factor of 2 so dividing both both numbers by 2 gives:

We could also take this one step further, and write this top heavy fraction as a mixed number. To do this, we divide the numerator by the denominator. 

15 ÷ 4 = 3 remainder 3. This means we have 3 whole numbers and 3 quarters left over:

 

Example 3:

As before, we could start by multiplying the numerators and denominators.

But these are bigger numbers to multiply, and so harder to do quickly. There's an easier way!

 

 

We can see that 22 and 33 have a common factor of 11, so let's divide both numbers by 11:

Now, we can see that 15 and 45 have a common factor of 15, so let's divide both numbers by 15:

Now we have a much simpler fraction to multiply:

There's no common factor for 2 and 9, so our fraction is fully simplified. 

 

That's a lot of things to remember, so feel free to look back at this introduction at any point by simply clicking on the red help button on the screen.

 

Let's get started!