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!(3 points)

Answer 1

To find out how much sugar Ms. Johnson used when she baked the birthday cake, we need to calculate half of the sugar she had in the canister.

1. Identify the amount of sugar in the canister: There are \( \frac{7}{8} \) cups of sugar.

2. Calculate half of \( \frac{7}{8} \):

   • To find half, we need to multiply \( \frac{7}{8} \) by \( \frac{1}{2} \).
   • The multiplication involves multiplying the numerators together and the denominators together:

   \[ \text{Half of } \frac{7}{8} = \frac{7}{8} \times \frac{1}{2} = \frac{7 \times 1}{8 \times 2} = \frac{7}{16} \]

3. Conclusion: Therefore, Ms. Johnson used \( \frac{7}{16} \) cups of sugar for the birthday cake.

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