Skip to main content
Loading...

A Fractioned Shape Introduction

How can you describe the area of a fractioned shape?

Goal:

Goal:

Madelyn and her cousin are drawing designs for a bike race. They want the race to have 4 straight lanes. Madelyn draws 3 vertical lines on her paper. Madelyn’s cousin draws 3 horizontal lines on her paper. Then, they write “Start” and “Finish.” When they’re done with their drawings, they show each other what they made.

Madelyn and her cousin drawing the design for the bike race.

Madelyn's drawing:

A square with partitioned into 4 equal parts with 3 vertical lines. The top is the start area and the bottom is the finish area.

Madelyn's cousin's drawing:

A square with partitioned into 4 equal parts with 3 horizontal lines. The left is the start area and the right is the finish area.

“Whoa!” says Madelyn. “We drew different pictures, but they still have the 4 lanes we needed!”

Question

What fraction of the bikes lanes does each lane represent?

There are 4 total bike lanes, so each bike lane represents \(\Large\frac{1}{4}\) .