How many times does three fifths go into 1?

Answer 1

This is a little tricky, but a good property of numbers to remember. "Goes into" usually means division, so this question is asking what is 3/5 divided by 1.

Well, division has the property that any number divided by one gives that same number. It is one of the ways that 1 is a special number.

So, 3/5 divided by 1 is 3/5 ! If you want to write that as a decimal fraction, it is 0.6

By the way, 1 has this property for both multiplication and division, which are sometimes called operations of the second kind. Division is the inverse of multiplication, so you might expect that they share some properties. When you multiply a number times 1, you get the number. When you divide a number by 1, you get that number.

Another number that has a similar property is 0. Zero works for addition and subtraction -- operations of the first kind, and inverses to each other. Any number plus zero gives the same number back, and any number minus zero is again that same number.

This is called the identity property of the operation. Zero is the identity element for addition and subtraction. One is the identity element for multiplication and division.

Later, you learn about operations of the third kind, when things start to get interesting.