So, the other day I was messing around and needed to figure out what 5/18 actually looks like as a decimal number. You know, like 0 point something.
I stared at it for a bit. Fractions, right? 5 on top, 18 on the bottom. How do you even turn that into a regular decimal?
My process
Then it kinda clicked, or maybe I remembered from way back. That line in the fraction? It basically just means ‘divide’. Yeah, simple as that sometimes.
So, the plan was clear:
- Take the top number, which is 5.
- Divide it by the bottom number, which is 18.
I grabbed my phone, opened the calculator app – because who does long division by hand anymore, right? I typed in 5, hit the divide button, then typed 18, and hit equals.
What I found
The screen showed 0.277777… and it just kept going with the sevens. It’s one of those repeating decimals.
Usually, you don’t need all those sevens. For most things, rounding it makes sense. If you round it to two decimal places, that third 7 makes the second 7 round up to 8.
So, 5 divided by 18 gives you 0.2777… repeating, or if you round it nice and neat, you get about 0.28.
Pretty straightforward once I remembered the division thing. Just divide the top by the bottom. Worked like a charm.
