Dividing a decimal by a whole number on the number line

In this video, we're going to try to figure out what 0.6, or 6 tenths, divided by 2 is. I'll give you a little bit of a hint; we have 6 tenths plotted on the number line right over here.

One way to think about it is if I wanted to go from zero to six tenths in two jumps, how big would each of those jumps have to be? Pause this video and try to figure that out on your own before we work through it together.

All right, so as I mentioned, one way to think about it is how can I go from zero to six tenths in two jumps—two equal jumps, I should say. Well, if we just eyeball it right over here, I could do one jump like that and then another jump like that.

So I did one jump and then two jumps. One way to think about it is we've divided six tenths into two jumps, and each of those jumps are how far? Well, each of those jumps are one, two, three tenths.

So this is three tenths, or I could write it like this: three tenths. We have another one, two, three tenths. So this is going to be equal to three tenths.

We've thought about it in other ways; if you have six of something and you divide it by two, you're going to have two groups of three of that something. So if you have six tenths and you want to put it into two equal groups, well, each of those groups are going to be three tenths.