I’m not understanding the answer listed on this site to the following question: sam has a piece of string 7/8 m long he uses 1/5 of the piece of string to tie a package and cuts the rest into five equal pieces what is the length of each piece. i need understanding the answer and how it is arrived at .

Okay, I think I understand this. Our first step is to solve how long the string is after he used some of it to tie the package. I have a feeling we have to subtract 7/8 - 1/5. Find a least common multiple (in this case, it's 40) and our new fractions are 35/40 and 8/45. Subtract:

35/40 - 8/40 = 27/40.

I don't think this can be simplified down any further as they do not have any common factors. So with that in mind, let's divide 27/40 with 5/1 (5/1 is basically 5 wholes but in fraction version)

When dividing fractions, you want to use the KCF technique (my old math teacher taught me this). Keep the first fraction the same (in this case, 27/40), change the sign from multiplication to division, and flip 5/1 to get it's reciprocal, 1/5. The equation will look like this:

27/40 * 1/5 = 27/200

So each piece is about 27/200 m in length (or 0.135 m in length).

If this is wrong, please let me know, but this is what I got out of this question. I hope this helped you :)