Onions and Fractions
A teacher's onion-chopping word problem about dividing by 1/17 leaves the students in tears, and they can't tell whether it's the onions or the fractions.
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Cartoon by Ben Orlin, Math with Bad Drawings. https://cartoons.mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015-01-01-onions-and-fractions/ (CC BY-NC 4.0)Transcript
Teacher (pointing to four onions): "Imagine you're chopping 4 onions into pieces of size 1/17…"
Student: "Are we crying because of the onions?"
Student 2: "I think it's the fractions!"
Student 3: "Or both…"