Question Video: Finding the Divisor in a Division Equation Relating Three Whole Numbers Mathematics • 3rd Grade

Video Transcript

Find the missing divisor. 32 divided by what equals eight? Hint: eight times what equals 32?

In this problem, we’re given a division question with a missing number in it. And we’re told to find the missing divisor. The word divisor means the number that we divide by in a division calculation. So the divisor in this particular calculation is the number that we’re dividing by. It’s the second number in a division. The first number in our division is 32. Here’s what 32 looks like. We’re told to divide it by something, that’s our missing divisor, and it will give us an answer, eight.

One way of thinking about our division is as splitting 32 into groups of a certain number, and then we’ll have eight equal groups at the end of it. But eight groups of what? What should we divide 32 by to give us eight groups? We’re given a hint to help us. We can use a multiplication fact to help us find the related division fact. Eight times what equals 32? Eight times one is eight. Eight times two is 16. Eight times three is 24. And eight times four is 32. We know that eight lots of four make 32. And, we can use this multiplication fact to help us find the missing divisor.

If we know that there are eight lots of four in 32, then if we start with 32, we know we want to divide by something to give us eight equal groups. The number that we’re dividing by and the number that’s in each group is four. There are eight lots of four in 32. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. The missing divisor is four because 32 divided by four equals eight.