When you divide a whole number by a decimal less than 1, the quotient is greater than the whole number. why?

Well if you get back to the definition of a division, diving X by Y is finding out how many Ys you can have in a X.

It is clear that you will have more than X times Y if Y is less than 1 since dividing X by 1 is exactly X.

If you think of 10 and 1, you can divide 10 in exactly 10 portions of 1.
But you can divide it into 100 portions of 0,1.
And 100 is bigger than 10 of course.
Hope this helps.

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poppopularbee3 poppopularbee3 · Answer 2 · 2015-06-04T16:57:14-04:00

100 divided by 4 = 25
100 divided by a lesser number than 4, say 2, = 50
100 divided by an even lesser number than 4, say 1, = 100.

Notice the pattern. Each time we divide by a lesser number, the quotient (the answer) gets larger and larger

Dividing by 1 already equals a quotient that is EQUAL to the original number we are dividing.

Thus, for the pattern to continue, the quotient must become greater than the number.

100 divided by an even lesser number than 1, say .5 = 200.