Marvin has 4 books to read for homework this week. If he reads ⅔ of a book each night, how many night will it take him to read all of the books?

Question

Marvin has 4 books he need to read for homework

Answer 1

4 books can be split into thirds of a book:

Call the books A, B, C, D.

The three thirds of any book can be represented by the book letter followed by 1, 2 or 3.

Now write down the thirds of the books in a line:

A1 A2   A3 B1   B2 B3   C1 C2   C3 D1   D2 D3

From this picture, where the reading material is split into pairs representing 2/3 of a book or the final 1/3 of a book and the first third of the next, it’s easy to see how many nights it will take him to read all of the books. It will take 6 nights. The same result is obtained by dividing 4 by ⅔=4×3/2=6.