Dividing a unit fraction by a whole number

so let's see if we can figure out what 1/3 divided by 5 is and I'll give you a hint try to draw out 1/3 of a whole and then divided into five equal sections pause this video and try to do that all right now let's try to work through it together and to help us as I promised or as I suggested I guess we said let's draw a third so I will represent a whole by that square right over there and now let me split it up into three equal sections so this is all hand-drawn with the aid of a computer so it's not going to be perfect but let's say that that is three equal sections it's roughly three equal sections I didn't do it perfectly but you hopefully get the idea and so one-third would be one of those three equal sections so that's 1/3 right over there that I have just shaded in and I want to divide it into five or I want to divide it by five I should say so let's do that so to divide it by five I'm going to divide it into five equal sections and if I'm doing if I'm dividing that one into five equal sections let me just divide all of the thirds into five equal sections I'm essentially just going to make five rows here one and I'm gonna eyeball it so it's going to be approximate two three and then four and five equal sections no sad now split this whole into one two three four five rows of equal height now if I go to my original third and divided by five I would be left with this right over here but what fraction is this of the whole well what I've done now is I've split my whole into 15 equal sections how do I know that well I could count them 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 or you could just say look I had one to three thirds and now each of those have been split into 1 2 3 4 5 equal sections so 3 times 5 is 15 so each of these is a 15th and so the 1/3 divided by 5 is just one of those fifteen so that right over there is one of those fifteen so this is going to be equal to one fifteenth and we are done