I'm sure you are hungry by now. So is Mayor 1 and he's waiting for you to go in. Here's today's special at the Fracteria.



Soda:     $ 1/2
Burger:     $ 1 1/8
Fries:     $ 3/4


Mayor 1 is stumped. He asks 4/6, "How much is that? How much do I owe?"

Well, I'm not sure. I'll have to figure it out. Why dont you take a crack at it.

"OK," said the mayor. "Here goes..."

The burger costs 1 and an eighth. I'm good at adding whole numbers. So I'll put the 1 here. Next I'll add the fractions.

1/2 + 1/8 + 3/4. I add up the numerators 1 + 1 + 3 equals 5. The numerators 2 + 8 + 4 add up to 14. See I told I'm good at adding natural numbers. So what I owe - drumroll please - is 1 + 5/14.

4/6 stares befuddled. What? I wouldn't give that to the wait person.

Why not?

Because it's WRONG! Look. If we add fraction bars you will quickly see that 5/14ths can't be right.




"If you ate all that candy, how much would you eat?" asked 4/6ths. If I eat the whole bar plus 3/4 of a bar, plus another half, I'd eat more than two bars."

That's right! Now you are on the right track. Now lets get the exact amount.

 "Well, like all citizens of Fractionville I would use a fraction calculator to find out," replied 1. "So, let's try it," replied 4/6ths. "Click on the image below."



"So I owe $19/8 which is equivalent to $2 3/8. "That's cool. But what if I don't have a calculator handy?" asks Mayor 1.  4/6ths suggests a method that will work. "Notice that 1/2 and 1/8 = 4/8 + 1/8 = 5/8. So now you have 5/8 + 1 which gives you $1 and 5/8. Now we still need to add 3/4 which can clone itself to become 6/8. So now you have 5/8 + 6/8 which is 11/8.



Since 11/8ths is improper, you need to do the proper thing and turn it into a mixed number which is 1 3/8. Almost forgot about the 1 I need to add on.
So you owe $2 3/8," Mayor 1 sighs and says "There's gotta be a better way to handle this money stuff."

"Ahh," says 4/6. Your wish may coming soon via another town in the woods on the other side of the mountains."

"So here's 3 dollars. Keep the change as a tip," Mayor 1 says as he hands 3 crisp dollar bills to the wait person. " Otherwise I wouldn't know what to do with a "quarter.'"

"Quarter?" says 4/6, "1 dollar minus 4/5ths of a dollar is not a quarter. It's 1/5 of a dollar or 20 cents." "Do you see why?"

"Not sure," replied the Mayor.

4/6ths continued, "1 - 4/5 is the same as 5/5 - 4/5, because 1 and 5/5 are equivalent, because they belong to the same family. "Remember how you "shook yourself" to become 5/5 in the movie?"

"That's right," said Mayor 1. "I'm the same as 5/5."

Meanwhile 4/6 and Mayor 1 savored their lunch (the mayor ate his whole lunch while 4/6 ate 2/3rds) so it was time to move on. They walked out of the Fracteria and went next door to the Darts arena.