← All courses
🍪 Fraction Snack Lab

Meet the two numbers in a fraction!

They sit close together, but they have two completely different jobs. Let’s pull a fraction apart and see what each number does.

38
Open the snack lab ↓

One snack. Two number jobs.

Use the buttons to split one whole snack, choose some pieces, and discover the fraction.

🔬 Guided experimentStep 1 of 5

Start with the whole

Here is one whole snack.

A fraction begins with one whole thing. Right now, we have not split it into pieces.

NUMERATOR → chosen pieces
DENOMINATOR → all pieces
counts the
pink pieces
38 counts all
equal pieces
✨ Aha! 3⁄8 means 3 chosen pieces out of 8 equal pieces in the whole.

Now you run the lab!

Change either number and watch its job happen.

🎛 Fraction controls

The bottom control splits the whole. The top control colours pieces.

Denominator: all equal pieces5
Numerator: chosen pieces2
Keep the pieces equal-sized. Fair shares are the secret ingredient!
25

The numerator 2 counts 2 pink pieces. The denominator 5 counts all 5 equal pieces.

⭐ You cracked the fraction code!

Look up. Look down.

Numerator = chosenThe top number counts the pieces we mean.
Denominator = whole splitThe bottom number counts all equal pieces in one whole.

Put the two jobs together and a fraction tells us: how many chosen pieces out of how many equal pieces altogether.