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! (FRACTIONS)

1 answer

To find out how much sugar Ms. Johnson used from the canister when she baked the birthday cake, follow the steps below:

  1. Identify the amount of sugar in the canister: \[ \text{Amount of sugar} = \frac{7}{8} \text{ cups} \]

  2. Determine how much sugar she used: Ms. Johnson used \( \frac{1}{2} \) of the sugar in the canister. To find out how much that is, you need to multiply \( \frac{1}{2} \) by \( \frac{7}{8} \).

  3. Perform the multiplication of the fractions: \[ \text{Sugar used} = \frac{1}{2} \times \frac{7}{8} \]

    To multiply fractions, multiply the numerators together and the denominators together: \[ \text{Numerator: } 1 \times 7 = 7 \] \[ \text{Denominator: } 2 \times 8 = 16 \]

    Therefore, \[ \frac{1}{2} \times \frac{7}{8} = \frac{7}{16} \]

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

In summary, the steps to finding how much sugar she used are to multiply \( \frac{1}{2} \) by \( \frac{7}{8} \), resulting in \( \frac{7}{16} \) cups of sugar used.