Q, Did you know that you can unreduce a fraction?

Ans.

Remember, you reduce a fraction by dividing the numerator and denominator by the same numbers. Here we divide both 40 and 50 by 10:

But you can also go the other way!

Example. Suppose you have the fraction:

9/8

and you want its denominator to be 32. Well, if you multiply 8 by 4 you get 32. So you can just multiply the numerator and denominator by 4:

Another example: Suppose you are adding fractions:

You need to make the denominators match before you can add them, If you unreduced the second fraction by multiplying the numerator and denominator by 6, you get :

An example involving whole numbers: Suppose you want to change the number 7 into a fraction with denominator 5. What do you do? Remember, you can change a whole number into a fraction like this:

7 = 7 / 1

And then you can multiply the numerator and denominator by 5, like this:

7 = 7/1 = 35/5