Quincy spends 5/8 of his pocket money on snacks to keep in his locker. Write the fraction 5/8 in decimal form. The decimal equivalent of 5/8 is ?
Accepted Solution
A:
I'm gonna pull a couple tricks with this one just to give you a shortcut in this particular example. Let's break 5/8 up first. We know that 5/8 is, by definition, five-eighths, or 1/8, 5 times.
In math terms: 5/8 = 5 x (1/8).
Once we figure out 1/8 as a decimal, we can just multiply that by 5 to get 5/8.
Here's a bit of a leap: 1/8 is half of a half of a half. If we split something in half, we get 1/2. If we split 1/2 in half, we get 1/4. And if we split 1/4 in half, we get 1/8. Let's start with 1/2 as a decimal this time. 1/2 = 0.5 as a decimal, or 0.50 (trailing zeroes don't change the value of the decimal). Half of 0.50 is 0.25, or 0.250, and half of that - 1/8 - is 0.125.
Since 1/8 = 0.125, we can easily find 5/8 by multiplying 0.125 by 5, giving us