What is Fraction

what is fractionSo, what is fraction?

Suppose you divided a cake into 10 pieces and eat 3 pieces. How much of cake do you eat?

We write it as 310\frac{{3}}{{10}}.

3 is a number of pieces you eat and 10 is total number of pieces.

This is new situation because 3 is not divisible by 10 (3<10)\left(3<10\right).

A fraction is a way to represent division of integer into parts: nm\frac{{n}}{{m}} is a fraction where both n{n} and m{m} are integers.

n{n} is called numerator, m{m} is called denominator: nnumeratormdenominator\frac{{\overbrace{{\color{green}{{{n}}}}}^{{{\color{green}{{\text{numerator}}}}}}}}{{\underbrace{\color{purple}{{{m}}}}_{{{\color{purple}{{\text{denominator}}}}}}}}.

So, fractions arise when one number is not divisible by another: since 19 is not divisible by 3, but we want to divide them, we write 193\frac{{19}}{{3}}.

When integer is divisible by another integer we can write it as fraction, but it is more natural to write it as integer: 84=2\frac{{8}}{{4}}={2}.

Note, that every integer b{b} can be represented as a fraction: b=b1\color{purple}{{{b}=\frac{{b}}{{1}}}}.

For example, 5=51{5}=\frac{{5}}{{1}}.

In case when numerator and denominators are equal we obtain one as result: mm=1\color{red}{{\frac{{m}}{{m}}={1}}}.

For example, 1010=1\frac{{10}}{{10}}={1}.

Really, we divide a cake into 10 pieces and eat all 10 pieces - so we eat all cake.