How To Add Fractions On A Tape Measure

hi, i'm steve jones, and i'm going to tellyou how to write fractions. but just before i do that i'd like to explain why we needfractions in the first place. one of the main reasons is because in the past we've had thingslike feet and inches and ounces and pounds and they haven't been decimal. so, it's alwaysbeen easier to write them as a fraction than to write them as a decimal. for example onesixteenth is much easier than the decimal

How To Add Fractions On A Tape Measure, equivalent. so, looking at this, this is aruler and lets say this in inches. well here's the zero and here's the one. so, in betweenthe zero and the one we have actually sixteen divisions. now, all we need to know is howmany of those divisions are between the zero, where we put one end of our ruler and thepoint where we're measuring to. let's say

here is the measuring point. so we're measuringto that point. so this is the distance we want from zero to here. well it's very simplebecause if we do it using fractions, we will do it using sixteenths and this will be one,two, three, four, that's a quarter, one, two, three, four, another quarter, so that makeshalf, plus two more sixteenths. so we've got eight, nine, ten sixteenths. but of courseten sixteenths is not a nice number and we should cancel dividing both top and bottomby two and we will get five eighths. now this five eighths would be a common number usedfor example if you're a carpenter and you're measuring wood, he'll say ok, i want woodof thickness five eighths of an inch. he probably will say maybe, oh i want fifteen millimeters.but, five eighths is a much easier number

for him to use. and that is why we use this.but five eighths, ten sixteenths, because this is a proportion of the whole. now ifwe measure to a point further up. lets say this point, well we know we've got one whole,plus this of course is a half here. so we know we have one and a half inches. this representsinches, this is inches two little strokes. so that would be one and a half inches. andwe can repeat this for all distances. now when we come to ounces and pounds, we knowthat there are sixteen ounces to one pound. now, therefore, one ounces is just one outof sixteen in the pound. there are sixteen of these ounces in the pound. so there aresixteen ounces in the pound and i just want one of them. so, it's one sixteenth of a pound.so when we're writing fractions all we're

doing is expressing how much of the whole,the one we're looking at is.