Real world uses
This short video will tell you some ways fractions are important in every day life.
After watching this video you may think, okay, so fractions have something to do with money, cooking, and probability. Is that it? Is that the only time I'm going to use fractions? No! I went around my house and took some pictures of fractions that I saw just in my home:
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/0/4/20043941/5922593.jpg?314)
I do a lot of sewing. Sewing clothes, bags, and blankets all require knowing about fractions. All my rulers, my cutting board, even the sewing machine itself uses fractions. You can see in the picture of my rulers all the little lines between the numbers. Those are fractions; they represent parts of inches.
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/0/4/20043941/8472966.jpg?378)
You saw the lights in my bathroom earlier. This is a close up of one of the tiles on the floor. There are 12 red squares in this picture. The fraction of squares with diamonds is 4/12. The fraction of squares without diamonds is 8/12. My bathroom seems to be full of fractions!
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/0/4/20043941/8272996.jpg?300)
You might recognize these bowls from a previous lesson. They were in the cupboard in my kitchen. They are similar so they can be considered a group. 3 bowls are blue, 3 bowls are clear. You could say that 3/6 of the bowls are blue. You might also notice that 1/2 of the bowls are blue. 3/6 and 1/2 are equivalent fractions, something we will learned about in lesson 4.
![Picture](/uploads/2/0/0/4/20043941/8620711.jpg?1369314036)
Finally, I somehow managed to get all the pets in my house in one picture. There are lots of fractions here. There is a group of 4 pets so 4 is my denominator. 2 of my 4 pets are black. Writing that as a fraction is 2/4. 1/4 of the pets are white. What fraction of the pets are dogs? If you said 3/4 you're becoming a fraction expert! Can you think of another fraction that shown in this picture that I haven't mentioned?
And those were just a few of the things I found! I bet if you searched your house you could find your own fractions. Try it sometime- it was fun to view the world around me thinking about things as fractions.