Division of Decimals

We can use the same trick we used in the multiplication of decimals i.e. remove the decimal points and divide the numbers like whole numbers.

Let’s divide 40.5 by .20. Methods to divide these decimal numbers are as follows:

Method 1:  Convert the decimal numbers into whole numbers by multiplying both numerator and denominator by the same number. The denominator must be always a whole number.

(Multiply both the numerator and denominator by 5)

Method 2:  Alternatively, one can convert decimal numbers into whole numbers by multiplying with numbers having powers of 10 (10, 100, 1000, etc.).

• Consider the denominator, count the number of places (digits) right to the decimal point.

Here, the denominator is 0.20 and the number of digits right to the decimal point is 2.

40.5 ÷ 0.20 = 40.5 / 0.20

• Take the power of 10 the same as the number of digits right to the decimal point e. 10² = 100
• Multiply both numerator and denominator by 100.