Video: Unit Rates

Video Transcript

Determine the unit rate for the following situation: Albert earns three hundred and sixty dollars in forty hours.

Unit rates are when rates are expressed as a quantity of one. In our situation, we know that Albert makes a certain amount of money in forty hours. But we wanna express the unit rate, which means we wanna know how much does he make in one hour in the quantity of one. So the hour would be one.

We know we have three hundred and sixty dollars per forty hours. I set this up as a fraction: three hundred and sixty dollars over forty hours. Now I wanna know how much money would Albert make in one hour. How do we get from forty hours to one hour?

From here to there, we divide by forty. Forty hours divided by forty equals one hour. If we divide the denominator by something, we’ll need to divide the numerator by the same thing. So we will say, what is three hundred and sixty dollars divided by forty, which equals nine.

Albert would make nine dollars per hour. His unit rate is nine dollars per hour; in one hour, he can earn nine dollars. So the unit we’re talking about is hours and how much he makes is nine dollars.