Dividing into equal parts

A division It is an operation that is associated with the idea of ​​dividing a quantity or something into equal parts, consisting of the following elements:

• Dividend: what we want to divide;
• Divisor: amount of parts we want to divide;
• Quotient: result of the division;
• Remainder: what is left over in a division.

But do you know what it means to do the division into equal parts?

To understand this, imagine that someone wants to share a chocolate bar to eat on two different days. So that person has a few options:

• Divide into two pieces of different sizes, one larger and one smaller.
• Divide into two pieces of equal size.

Only in the second option, that person will be dividing it in equal parts. That is, not always sharing something means dividing it into equal parts.

divide into equal parts means dividing a quantity into portions of the same size each.

Dividing into equal parts

Now that we know what dividing into equal parts is, let's see some examples of how to do this.

Examples:

a) Divide a class of 30 students into 5 groups with the same number of students each.

We want 5 groups with the same number of students. How do we find this amount?

30 ÷ 5 = ?

Just think of a number that, when multiplied by 5, the result is 30. Let's go:

5 x 1 = 5
5 x 2 = 10
5 x 3 = 15
5 x 4 = 20
5 x 5 = 25
5 x 6 = 30

As 5 x 6 = 30 ⇒ 30 ÷ 5 = 6. That is, each group should have 6 students.

b) Divide equally an allowance of R$ 112.00 for the 7 days of the week.

Here, the calculation we have to do is:

112 ÷ 7 = ?

What number, when multiplied by 7, equals 112? Let's go:

7 x 10 = 70
7 x 11 = 77
7 x 12 = 84
7 x 13 = 91
7 x 14 = 98
7 x 15 = 105
7 x 16 = 112

So the number is 16. This means that on each day of the week R$ 16.00 can be used.

You may also be interested:

• division algorithm
• division by zero
• Divisible Numbers – Divisibility Rules