NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Maths Chapter 4 In-text Questions — Division Using Place Value

Book page 76 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.

Now, what if the ribbon was shared between four friends instead of 2?

Answer

Each friend gets 7.25 m.

Each gets 29 ÷ 4 m, that is 29/4 m.

Is 4 a factor of 10? No.
Is 4 a factor of 100? Yes — 4 × 25 = 100.

29/4 = (29 × 25)/(4 × 25) = 725/100 = 7.25 m

Why it happens: 4 does not divide 10, so a single decimal place is not enough. But 4 does divide 100, so two decimal places are exactly right. This is the reason quarters always end in .25 or .75.

Check it yourself: 7.25 × 4 = 29. ✓ And it makes sense that four friends get about half of what two friends got (14.5 m).

Q2.

Suppose we want to write the quotient 10/3 as a decimal. Can we convert this fraction to an equivalent fraction with a denominator such as 1, 10, 100, 1000, etc.?

Answer

No, it is not possible.

10, 100, 1000 … are built only from 2s and 5s:
10 = 2 × 5, 100 = 2 × 2 × 5 × 5, 1000 = 2 × 2 × 2 × 5 × 5 × 5

The denominator 3 is neither a 2 nor a 5, and 3 never divides any of them.

Why it happens: to change 10/3 into a fraction over 100, we would need a whole number k with 3 × k = 100. But 100 is not a multiple of 3 (1 + 0 + 0 = 1 is not divisible by 3). The same test fails for 10, 1000, 10000 and every power of ten. So no equivalent fraction of this kind exists, and we need a more general method — long division using place value.

Did you know? This is exactly why 10 ÷ 3 turns out to be 3.333… and never stops. The chapter comes back to it on page 84.

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