📊🤔 Explore A - Lesson 3.23 Zero as a Factor

Part 1

Play media comment.

Ms. Hardman has bags of supplies for her students. Each bag has the following supplies:

1) How many colored pencils would be in 2 bags? 

2) How many highlighters would be in 8 bags? 

3) How many paperclips would be in 4 bags? 

4) How many glue sticks would be in 5 bags? 

Why is the answer to question four 0?

There are no glue sticks in the picture.

Play media comment.

Part 2

How many glue sticks would there be in 25 bags?

How many glue sticks would there be in 548 bags?

The answer is 0.  There are no glue sticks in the bag.

5 x 0 =0

25 x 0 = 0

548 x 0 = 0

How many colored pencils would there be in 0 bags?

0

0 x 7 = 7

Play media comment.

Part 3

a) What is 12 items divided into 3 groups ($12\div3$)? 

b) Can you check your answer with a multiplication equation? 3 x ? = 12

c) What is $0\div5$, or 0 items divided into 5 groups? 

• • If Dan has 0 pencils to place in 5 groups, how many pencils will be in each group?

d) Because 5 x 0 = 0; 5 groups of 0 is 0.

e) What about 0 items divided into 8 groups,  $0\div8$? 

f) When there is a total of 0 items, it doesn't matter how many groups you divide it into, there are still 0 items.  $0\div8=0$, because 8 x 0 = 0.

g) What about $5\div0$, or 5 items divided into no groups?  This is NOT possible.

h) There are no groups to divide items into.  Also, there isn't anything to multiply by 0 to get 5.