Fractions : Introduction, History And Necessity | Know All About Fractions In 10 Minutes
In this video let us understand what are fractions and why we have to study them. We will also learn the history of fractions.
Let us understand this concept with our daily life example.
Let us take an orange and cut it into two equal parts. The whole orange can be represented with the natural number system as 1. But how do we define something which is a part of whole? Now we need some term to define this part. Now we need some representation to define this “part of the whole”.
This representation is called “fraction”.
Representation of fraction : Numerator/Denominator.
We will also understand where the fraction lies in the number system.
Fractions in the ancient world:
As early as 1800 BC Ancient Egyptians were aware of the concept of fractions. But they did not represent it in the way we know of today, they used symbols to represent the fractions. It was difficult to calculate using these representations. The Babylonians and the Romans too had their way of representing the fraction, but that too had its disadvantages.
In India, mathematical works like Sulab - Sutras (around 500 BC), the concept of fraction was used to solve mathematical problems.
Fractions are extensively used by 5th century mathematician Bramhagupta and 9th century mathematicians like Mahaviracharya, Sridhara, 10th century mathematician Sripati and 11th century mathematician Bhaskara II in their books.
Mahaviracharya, the 9th century mathematician was the first one to use the concept of least common multiple (L.C.M.) for solving problems in fractions.
The Arabs were the first ones to introduce the current represIn the 12th century Italian Mathematician Fibonacci introduced fractions in the Hindu-Arabic form in Italy through his book “The Book of Calculation”. He also introduced the Hindu-Arabic number system which is used currently.
In the 15th century Flemish Mathematician Simon Stevin in his work “The Art of Tenths” brought fractions to Europe.
This is the story of fractions and why it was necessary to bring them in the number system.
We have also used scratch program to show full orange and half orange.
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