If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

Main content

Division word problem: blueberries

Sal uses a picture and understanding of multiplication to solve a division word problem.  Created by Sal Khan.

Want to join the conversation?

Video transcript

- Kali is having a picnic for her six friends. The oldest friend, Vikram, is 10 years old. The youngest, Diya, is six years old. She has a total of 48 blueberries and wants to split them evenly between her friends. How many blueberries does each friend get? And I encourage you to now, pause this video and try to figure it out on your own. How many blueberries does each friend get? Let's think about this a little bit. So she has six friends. She has six friends and she wants them all to be able to get the same amount. So, she wants to split the 48 blueberries evenly amongst her six friends. The ages of her friends don't matter. So, she's going to take the 48 blueberries. She's going to take the 48 blueberries and divide it, and divide it by six. She wants to divide it into six groups. So she wants to divide it into six groups. 48 divided by 6. And so this, so question mark, is going to be equal to the number of blueberries that each friend gets. So 48 divided by six is equal to question mark, is the same thing as saying that 48, 48 is equal to, is equal to question mark times six, times six. So if we could figure out what number we can multiply by six to get 48, then we know what 48 divided by six actually is. For example, this question mark, this is the number of blueberries per friend. The number of blueberries per friend times six friends, well that should tell us the total number of blueberries, which is 48. So what is this number? Well, let's think about, let's just think about all of the multiples of six. So, six times one is equal to six. Six times two is equal to 12. And really we're just increasing by six each time. We're just increasing by six. Six times three is equal to 18. Six times four is equal to 24. Six times five is equal to 30. Six times six is equal to 36. Six times seven is equal to 42. Notice we're just adding six every time. Six times eight is equal to 48. Is equal to 48. So we now know that question mark, we now know that the question mark must be eight. Six times eight and eight times six is the same thing. So this is going to be equal to six times question mark. Six times question mark and now we learned that question mark is equal to 48. Sorry, question mark is equal to eight. So, each of her friends are going to get eight blueberries. So this is, right over here, 48 divided by six is equal to eight blueberries. Now, let's verify that. We have 48 blueberries right over here. Lets divide them into six groups where each group is going to have eight blueberries. So let me do my best. So let's see, this is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So, that's a group of eight blueberries. See, here's another group of eight blueberries, right over here. And there's another group, right over here, of eight blueberries. And then, here's our fourth group of eight blueberries. And now, let's see, we can make a fifth group of eight blueberries. Fifth group of eight blueberries. And then, finally, here is our sixth group. Here is our sixth group of eight blueberries. So notice, we have six groups of eight blueberries. Each of her six friends could take one of these groups of eight blueberries.