Division - to split in parts

Here comes Michael. And he brought his rabbits! Oh, look how many they are now! 1, 2, 3… 20 rabbits! Seems like you need to get new cages Michael.

How many cages do you need? If you can fit four rabbits in one cage, then there’ll be... 1, 2, 3, 4 in the first cage. and 1, 2, 3, 4 in the second, and in the next, And that one, and that! You’ll need five cages.

We can write it like this: 20 - the total number of rabbits divided by 4 - the number of rabbits in each cage equals 5 - the number of cages. This is a division. Look at the numbers: 20, 4, and 5. Look familiar? Do you recognise them from the times tables?

That’s right, 5 times 4 is 20. Because division is multiplication, backwards. Because of this, you can always test to verify if you have calculated a division correctly. Pretty good isn’t it? Now let’s count something else!

Leon is making cookies. He has three cookies left, and 12 chocolate chips to place on top of them. How many chocolate chips will there be on each cookie? Well, let’s distribute the chocolate and count… 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 That’s four little pieces of chocolate for each cookie. This too can be stated as a division.

Pause the film and try it for yourself! We write it like this: 12 (chocolate chips) divided by 3 (cookies) equals... four! And then we double check, counting backwards using multiplication: the answer, 4, times this number here, 3, should be equal to the first number, 12! Yup, 4 times 3 equals 12, that’s correct!

Let’s do two more examples, which you can calculate on your own. Here are 15 gold coins. And three bandits. Each bandit is going to get the same number of gold coins. Pause the film, and set it up as a division.

And Calculate! 15 divided by 3 equals 5. Because 5 times 3 equals 15. Each bandit gets five gold coins. Here’s a rope that is 24 meters long, and you are to split it up in sections that are 6 meters each.

How many 6 meter sections will you get? Pause and try! 24 divided by 6 equals 4. Because 4 times 6 equals 24. The rope is long enough to make 4 shorter pieces.

Here they are, all four divisions we have been working through. Are you starting to see how this all fits together? Here it says how many we have of something: rabbits, cookies, gold coins, or meters of rope. This number we call the dividend. And here, we see how much we should divide the dividend by: this number is the divisor.

And once we have calculated the division, we get the answer: the quotient. Dividend divided by divisor equals quotient. In order to test whether you have done the calculating right, do this: take the quotient and multiply with the divisor. If the quotient times the divisor equals the dividend, then you have done the calculation right! Division: just like multiplication, only backwards.