Video Transcript
Pick the rectangle that matches
Jacob’s description. One-third is colored blue. Two-thirds are colored yellow.
In this question, we can see four
different rectangles. And we’re told to pick the
rectangle that matches Jacob’s description. So perhaps we’d better read his
description carefully. In his description, Jacob mentions
two fractions. He tells us that one-third of the
rectangle is colored blue. And then he mentions another
fraction. Two-thirds are colored yellow. Now, what is this word “third” that
he mentions?
A third is a type of fraction. It’s when one whole has been split
into three equal parts. Now, there are two things that are
really important about that definition. Firstly, we’re looking for
something that’s been split into three parts. And then they need to be three
equal parts too. So to begin with, let’s look at our
rectangles and see which ones have been split into thirds.
If we look at our first rectangle,
we can see that it has been split into three parts, but they’re not all the same
size, are they? This part over here is a lot bigger
than the other two. These parts are not equal. So we can’t say that this
rectangle’s been split into thirds. It’s really important to understand
why this rectangle is not correct because it might be quite easy to choose it as the
correct answer. It does have one out of three parts
colored blue and two out of three parts colored yellow. But they’re not equal parts, and so
they’re not thirds. Don’t be caught out by this
rectangle.
Now, if we look at our second
rectangle, again, we can see one part blue, two parts yellow, and they are all equal
parts. But there’s a part that’s colored
white too. There are four equal parts. This rectangle doesn’t show thirds
either; it shows quarters. So this doesn’t match Jacob’s
description.
Now, if we look at our final two
rectangles, we can see that each one has been split into three parts. And each of those three parts is
equal. These have both been split into
what we call thirds. But only one of our rectangles is
correct. Jacob says that one-third is
colored blue, in other words, one out of three equal parts. Looks like the correct rectangle
might be this one, doesn’t it? This has one out of three equal
parts that’s blue.
Now, when Jacob tells us that
two-thirds are colored yellow, he’s telling us that two out of three equal parts are
colored yellow. And we can see these in the first
rectangle too. Notice that these two parts aren’t
right next to each other. When we show a fraction, it doesn’t
have to be that we color the parts side by side. As long as any two of the three
parts are shaded, then two-thirds are shaded. We knew we were looking for a
rectangle that had been divided into three equal parts, where one of those parts was
colored blue and the other two parts were colored yellow. The correct rectangle is this one
here. One-third is blue, and two-thirds
are yellow.
