Basic Math: Lesson 6 - Introduction To Fractions
An informal introduction to why we need to learn about fractions.
Lesson 6 consists of providing you with a Self-Tutorial on all about fractions. This lesson is different from the previous ones in that the use of printed Notes is integrated with the Video (other Notes may be used independently of the videos). This lesson is VERY detailed and covers the necessary areas to help students review the many aspects of fractions and fraction conversions. I also show you how to perform all the many different fraction operations and conversions using the TI-84+ Graphing Calculator.
Step 1: Fractions:
Fractions are a huge part of just everyday occurrences and let's take a moment now to illustrate some of those. Fractions exist in our money. In fact, we have half dollars, we have quarter dollars - they're parts of a whole. Nickels, dimes, pennies - they're all portions of a dollar - and the portions, the subdivisions, are fractions.
Step 2: Fractions in medicine:
In the medical field, fractions play a huge part. For instance, if you want to give a patient a certain dosage of medicine - either pill form or an injection - you have to measure things in small portions and that's where fractions come in.Oh yeah, fractions play a huge part in music. Yeah you've got your beats - those are fractions! You have your half notes and quarter notes! Why am I yelling? Okay, you've got your quarter notes, half notes, eighth notes - they're all fractions.
Step 3: Fractions in sports:
Sports are oozing with fractions. Baseball, for example, when you have like a batting average or a pitcher's ERA, they're fractions really. How about football for example? You've got your fullback, you've got your halfback, you've got your quarterback - the players are named after fractions! It's amazing! - And of course in any sport, you're dealing with time factors - a tenth of a second - a hundredth of a second - they're all about fractions.
Step 4: Fractions in cooking:
Cooking is another terrific example of what fractions are all about. For example, your measuring things - your cups or portions of a cup and certainly your tablespoons or teaspoons - you're dealing in recipes with fractions. - Also, when recipes call for - let's say this serves four people but you have a party of twenty - we have to now multiply fractions and that's something that's important to do. - Or let's say you only have one person, so you get to now divide your portions to get the proper amount for your recipe.
Step 5: Fractions in retail:
Shopping's another great example of using fractions. For example, if you're getting stuff half-priced or ten percent off. Yes, a percentage is a type of fraction. Fractions play a huge role in of course maths and sciences. For example, right over here you can see practically if you want to measure a certain volume of a liquid.
Step 6: Fractions in circles:
If you divide a circle into three-hundred and sixty equal parts, each part is called a degree. Maybe you can see it with this thing - it's called an anglometer. Here, for example, I don't know if you can see that, but that's one degree. If I increase this, see right there's forty-five degrees, so that angle of measurement's forty-five parts of three-hundred and sixty parts. - Fractions. - And we can go further - we can go ninety degrees or a hundred and eighty and so on. - So measuring angles is very important in the real world and it all has to do with fractions.
Step 7: Fractions in a day:
Time is another great example of fractions. An hour is 1 24th of a day and each hour can be divided into 60 minutes so each minute is 160th of an hour. And of course each minute that passes, 60 seconds have occurred so each second is 1 60th of a minute.
Step 8: Degrees of pizza:
Of course, my favourite fraction is ... pizza! That's right. Without fractions, you'd have a tough time eating this thing and you won't be able to cut it because each cut - each slice - is a fraction.
Step 9: The lesson:
Now that we've had a chance to look at some examples of fractions in the real world, it's now time to do the lesson. The first step - go to the disk and print up the notes - or at least the portions that talk about the examples of the exercises - and the lesson quiz of course. Read through them until it says "come back to the video" and then I will explain pretty much what the notes say, but I hope to illustrate things maybe in a clearer way or sometimes just seeing the examples worked out may be better than just reading about it. Also, when you see something like this, that means it's a special video exercise. Now you need to listen carefully. I will tell you when you should pause and again you'll see this icon right here. Okay so there's the pause and there's the play. Pause the video, try to do the problem, and then press play, and then I will work out the problem on the board. - and this gives us more of an interaction. You read, you watch video, you do problems, and you understand fractions.
Step 10: Reference fractions:
Now another thing you may notice is that I have these fractions on the bottom of the screen here. Well, what is this all about anyway? Well, I'm going to call these my reference fractions - and I tried to match fractions in the notes with these over here in color and size. So, if you see something that looks like a half, well most likely it's going to be one of these things. If you see an eighth, it's probably going to be one of these guys right here. Now, not all fractions are represented here - but just the main ones. Most examples of fractions that use round figures, I would use the pizza that you saw earlier on the board or other graphics but mostly the pizza.Now I'd like you to take a moment to read the section in your notes titled "Understanding Fractions" and I'll see you back over here.
