One by Two
Maya Bisineer
Jiya
was excited. It was Big Mela day!
"Hurry
up, Ammi!" Jiya tugged impatiently at Ammi's dupatta.
Ammi
smiled. She knew the real reason for Jiya's excitement.
"The
Big Mela is open ALL day, Jiya," she said. "It isn't going
anywhere."
"But
Rani is! To a wedding! In the afternoon..." Jiya stopped
suddenly.
Ammi roared with laughter. "I knew you two rascals had planned this
together!"
Rani
was Jiya's neighbour. She was only five, and she adored
eight-year-old Jiya.
Jiya
wondered how Ammi had known their secret.
"Ammi magic!"
winked Ammi.
She
didn't tell Jiya that she and Rani's Amma had made their own plans
for the Mela. Ammis have secrets too.
The
Big Mela was as wonderful as ever. But Rani's eyes and nose were only
searching for one thing.
"Jiya
didi, I can smell it now!" Rani was very excited. "Rafiq
Kaka's Famous Mutton Biryani and More Famous Gulab Jamoons! I want a
WHOLE plate to myself! May I, pleeeeease?"
Jiya laughed. "A WHOLE plate? Your eyes are bigger than your little stomach, Rani!"
Jiya
counted out her money. She only had enough for one plate of biryani
and one plate of gulab jamoons. But Rani looked so eager that Jiya didn't
have the heart to tell her.
"Tell
you what, Rani!" she said. "We'll do a One-by-Two."
"One-by-Two?
What's that?"
"You'll
see," said Jiya.
"One
plate of Famous Biryani, please, Rafiq Kaka!" Jiya emptied her
purse onto the counter.
"ONE
plate?" protested Rani. "I thought we were getting one
EACH!"
"One-by-Two
is more fun!" said Jiya.
"That's
right!" said Rafiq Kaka, heaping a plate with biryani.
He
cut a big piece of mutton in half and popped both pieces on top of
the rice. Then he filled a bowl with jamoons, six instead of the
usual four.
"Thanks,
Rafiq Kaka," Jiya smiled gratefully at him.
Rani
had had enough. "What's a One-by-Two, didi? Tell me NOW!"
Jiya
put one piece of mutton on Rani's plate and one on hers. "One-by-Two
means that we take ONE thing and share it equally between the TWO of
us," she said.
"I
like that," said Rani. "It's a fair way to share. But how
do we do it, didi?"
"We
draw a line right through the centre of the plate to make 1 plate of
biryani into 2 equal parts.
You
get one part, and I get the other part, like this. One-by-Two.
Same-same."
Five minutes later, the girls had wiped their plates clean.
"Yum!" said Rani. "I'm stuffed!"
"What
about the One-by-Two for the jamoons?" said Jiya.
"Oh yes! I want to draw the line in the middle!" said Rani.
Rani
drew a line through the sugar syrup with her spoon. But every time
she moved her spoon away, the jamoons simply floated back into the
centre of the bowl.
"This
isn't working, didi," she said sadly. "We can't do a
One-by-Two with the jamoons."
Jiya
laughed. "Of course we can," she said. "We just do it
a different way."
"Let's
put one here for you," Jiya put a jamoon in Rani's bowl, "and
one there for me. And now we do the same with the syrup. One spoonful
for you, and one for me."
"Okay,"
said Rani. "What next?"
"We
do it again," said Jiya. "One for Rani, one for Jiya. And
we keep doing that until all the jamoons and all the syrup are gone."
"Can
I do it now?" said Rani, eyes shining. "One here, one
there. And now there are no more jamoons left. One-by-Two!"
"Not
so fast," said Jiya. "One-by-Two means dividing a thing
into two EQUAL parts. Are you sure we have shared the jamoons
equally, Rani?"
Rani
shook her head.
"Let's
find out," said Jiya. "Count how many jamoons you have, and
how many I have."
"I
have 1,2,3... 3 jamoons, and you have 1,2,3... 3 jamoons. That
means," Rani was excited now, "we have shared the jamoons
EQUALLY! We have a One-by-Two! And we didn't even draw a line in the
middle!"
Jiya
laughed. "Yes, you got ONE of TWO equal parts, and I got ONE of
TWO equal parts. ONE by TWO!"
"Hurray!"
said Rani. "Can we eat now?" They grinned at each other
through a mouthful of yummy jamoons.
"Did
you girls have fun?" asked Rani's Amma.
"Yes,
Amma!" Rani hugged her mother. "I learned how to turn ONE
into TWO."
"One
into two?" Ammi looked puzzled. "I don't understand."
Jiya
and Rani giggled. "That's okay, Ammi," winked Jiya. "It's a
secret."
Learning
to share
What
if Rani's friend Raju had joined Jiya and Rani? Would a One-by-Two
have worked then?
No,
of course it wouldn't. Jiya would have had to do a different trick,
called a One-by-Three, where she divided ONE thing into THREE equal
parts.
What if Ammi had joined them and they still had only one plate
of biryani to share? Well, Jiya would have simply performed the
One-by-Four, where she would have divided the ONE plate of biryani
into FOUR equal parts.
There
is a name in mathematics for the trick of dividing something into
many equal parts. The trick is called Fractions . Fractions are
wonderful because they help you share things equally and fairly.
In
maths:
The
one-by-two fraction is written as 1/2 .
Another name for One-by-Two is Half .
The
one-by-three fraction is written as 1/3 .
Another name for it is One-third.
The
one-by-four fraction is written as 1/4.
Another name for it is a Quarter .
Think
about it:
How
would you do a One-by-Two with a dosa? Would you draw a line through
the centre with a knife or use the 'one here-one there' method?
What
if Rafiq Kaka had given the girls seven jamoons? How would they have
done a One-by-Two then?
What
method would you use to do a One-by-Two with:
A bowl of sweets
A
glass of sugarcane juice