There are 7/8 cups of sugar in a canister in the kitchen. Ms. Johnson used 1/2 of the sugar when she baked a birthday cake. How much sugar did she use? Show/explain all steps needed to get to the correct answer!

Answer 1

To determine how much sugar Ms. Johnson used from the canister, we need to find half of the amount of sugar that was originally in the canister.

1. Identify the total amount of sugar: Ms. Johnson has \( \frac{7}{8} \) cups of sugar in the canister.

2. Find half of the sugar: To find half of \( \frac{7}{8} \), we can multiply \( \frac{7}{8} \) by \( \frac{1}{2} \).

   \[ \text{Sugar used} = \frac{7}{8} \times \frac{1}{2} \]

3. Multiply the fractions: When multiplying fractions, multiply the numerators together and the denominators together.

   \[ \text{Numerator: } 7 \times 1 = 7 \] \[ \text{Denominator: } 8 \times 2 = 16 \]

   So, we have:

   \[ \text{Sugar used} = \frac{7}{16} \]

4. Final result: Ms. Johnson used \( \frac{7}{16} \) cups of sugar to bake the birthday cake.

Thus, the answer is that Ms. Johnson used \( \frac{7}{16} \) cups of sugar.