Decimals

What are decimals?

A decimal is another way to write a fraction. You can think of a decimal as a part of a whole number. It is less than 1 whole thing, but more than 0.

You may not realize it, but you see decimals a lot in real life. One of the most common examples is money.

Do you recognize these coins? We have a quarter, a dime, and two pennies. You could write each of these as a decimal. That's because each coin is worth less than a whole dollar.

Click through the slideshow to learn how decimals work.

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  This is a dollar. A dollar represents a whole number. It is equal to 1.

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  We could also write that as 1.00. In other words, 1 = 1.00.

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  1.00 is a decimal. Here, it means we have 1 dollar and 0 cents.

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  As you may already know, there are 100 pennies in a dollar. This means 100 pennies equals 1.00.

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  One penny is part of a dollar. More specifically, it's 1 cent. We could also write that as a decimal: 0.01.

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  Let's look at a few more decimals. 9 cents is 0.09 of a dollar.

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  A quarter, or 25 cents, is 0.25 of a dollar. Any time you have part of a whole, you can write it as a decimal.

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  Let's look at another example. This pitcher holds 1 liter of water. Right now it's full.

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  We could write this as a decimal: 1.00 liters.

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  The pitcher is split into 10 parts. This means each part is equal to 0.10 liters.

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  As the day goes on, the pitcher gets emptier. Now it has 0.70 liters. That's because we used up 0.30 liters.

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  Now it has 0.50 liters, or half a liter.

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  Now it has 0.20 liters. Even though we have less than one liter, we have more than zero liters, so we can write it as a decimal.

   

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