One of my students asked me a fractions question. She knows that 0/1 equals 0 but does 1/0 also equal 0?

Thanks.

Lisa
Grade 8 Teacher

The way to understand this is to think about the original problem which division was supposed to solve:

a/b = c is saying b x (c) = a or a = b x (??)

For 0/1 the problem you are trying to solve is

For 1/0 the problem you are trying to solve is:

So there is no answer for this 'fraction'. That is, there is no number c so that 1/0 = c.