This is my common denominators using my favorite food pizza! Its also the easiest object to describe common denominators with
My drawings might not have the most accurate cut pictures (but to be fair, people are not perfect at cutting in real life anyways).
This is the pizza I’m using to describe common denominators with.
As you can see, this pizza is divided into thirds, but this is only 1 piece, so the fraction would be 1/3
This is another pizza that is divided into halves, and this is only 1 piece, so the fraction would be 1/2.
We can add these two pieces together, but they would not be even and would look like this
We need to evenly divide the pieces so the pizza pieces would all be even!
Step 1. Find the common denominator
1/2 does not go with 1/3 as we said before, so we need to find the common denominator
Common denominators of 2: 2, 4, (6)
Common denominators of 3: 3, (6)
The common denominator between 2 and 3 is 6, so now we will divide the slices to make it go into 6.
1/2 x 3 = 3/6
1/3 x 2 = 2/6
So 3/6 + 2/6 = 5/6
Yay! now the pizza pieces are even and look good to eat! (except for that 1 missing piece)
If you are struggling with common denominators in math, it is always good to use pictures to describe common denominators like the picture shown above.
Thank you for reading this post.