Expert: Josh - 9/16/2009

Question
It has been so long since I have been out of school I forgot how to do this problem. If 48 apples cost $3.28, how much would one apple cost? Do I divide 48 by 3.28 or do I divide 3.28 by 48? Please do the figuring out for me, step by step, and how do I do the division or multiplication?. Thank you very much. Al Brown

Answer
Hi Al,

What we need in this situation is divide 3.28 by 48.

Unless you are interested in the actual mechanics of doing long division by hand, the easiest way to simplify this is to plug in 3.28 on a calculator, followed by the "/" key which stands for division, followed by 48 and the "=" or "ANS" key.

If 48 apples cost $3.28, it stands to reason that 1 apple costs much less (48 times less to be exact). So, we should divide 3.28 by 48 to get approximately 6.8 cents each.

Because numbers don't line up the way they are supposed to, it is very difficult to show you the actual process of division step by step in this format. If interested, you can take a look at http://www.mathsisfun.com/long_division.html OR look up the topic of "long division" on a search engine. I'm sure you will find plenty of examples.

Josh