How Do You Find a Common Denominator and a Least Common Denominator?

How Do You Find a Common Denominator and a Least Common Denominator?

Note:

This tutorial gives you some practice finding a common denominator and the least common denominator of three fractions. There's only one least common denominator, but there are many common denominators. This tutorial gives you one. Can you find another?

Keywords:

  • problem
  • skill
  • fractions
  • denominator
  • common denominator
  • least common denominator
  • prime
  • prime factorization
  • prime factors

Background Tutorials

  • Find all factor pairs for a whole number in the range 1-100. Recognize that a whole number is a multiple of each of its factors. Determine whether a given whole number in the range 1-100 is a multiple of a given one-digit number. Determine whether a given whole number in the range 1-100 is prime or composite.

      • What's a Prime Number?What's a Prime Number?

      What's a Prime Number?

      Prime numbers aren't too hard to define, but they still puzzle professional mathematicians. Believe it or not, all over the word computers are chugging away, trying to find the next biggest prime! Bigger and bigger prime numbers help keep your credit card info safe through really cool encryption techniques. So prime numbers really matter every day, and you can learn how they are defined in this tutorial.

Further Exploration

  • Add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators (including mixed numbers) by replacing given fractions with equivalent fractions in such a way as to produce an equivalent sum or difference of fractions with like denominators.

  • Understand subtraction of rational numbers as adding the additive inverse, p - q = p + (-q). Show that the distance between two rational numbers on the number line is the absolute value of their difference, and apply this principle in real-world contexts.