22 Jan
Dividing Apples as a Motivation for Fraction Addition
How to divide evenly 7 apples between 12 boys?
An obious answer is to divided each apple into twelve parts and give each boy seven of them.
But assume there is a restriction: one does not know how to divide an apple into more than 5 parts. What do you do then?
Apparently it is quite possible to convince students that 1/3 + 1/4 must be equal 7/12 even before the operation of addition has been defined for fractions.
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