1/4 As A Decimal

Four friends, Rocky, Rooney, David, and Sam divided a donut equally among themselves. Sam asked, "What portion of the donut do I have?" Rocky replied, " One fourth." Sam asked again, "Is it possible to write it in a form that has denominator 1?".

Let us help Sam resolve his query in mere few minutes. 

This section focuses on representing \( \frac{1}{4} \) as a decimal along with some interactive examples and questions on the representation of \( \frac{3}{8} \) as a decimal, \( \frac{2}{3} \) as a decimal, and decimal to fraction conversion. Do not forget to try practice questions at the end of the page for a quick fun revision.

Lesson Plan

When we convert a fraction into decimal form, we convert it into a number that has denominator 1. So the numerator takes a form that has a decimal in it.

The decimal form of \(\dfrac{1}{4}\,\) is 0.25

Let's see how to get that.

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The fraction \(\dfrac{1}{4}\,\)can be converted to a form with denomiator 1 by finding its decimal form.

To get the decimal form of \(\dfrac{1}{4}\,\), different methods can be used.

Method 1

In this method, we use long division.

Here, Numerator = 1 and Denominator = 4. Let's divide 1 by 4

So,

\(\dfrac{1}{4}=0.25.....\text{Decimal form}\)

We can use this method for converting any fraction to decimal form.

Method 2

The other method is to convert the fraction into its equivalent fraction with denominator as a power of 10

The first power of 10 is 10 which is not a multiple of 4. So, let's look at the second multiple, 100, which is a multiple of 4

In the fraction \(\dfrac{1}{4}\), denominator = 4

\begin{align} \dfrac{1}{4}&=\dfrac{1\times 25}{4\times 25}\\&=\dfrac{25}{100}\end{align}

Now, observe that there are 2 zeros in the denominator.

So, there will be two digits after decimal in the numerator.

\(\dfrac{1}{4}=0.25\)

Similarly, if we have the fraction \(\dfrac{3}{8}\), we can convert it into decimal by converting it into its equivalent fraction with denominator 1000

\begin{align} \dfrac{3}{8}&=\dfrac{3\times 125}{8\times 125}\\&=\dfrac{375}{1000}\\&=0.375\end{align}

We can even convert a decimal to fraction. For this, we consider the number of digits after the decimal.

Example: Take 0.65. There are two digits after the decimal.

\begin{align} 0.65&= \dfrac{65}{100}\\&=\dfrac{13}{20}\end{align}