Tiny Pieces: Understanding Hundredths

Imagine you have one chocolate bar. You snap it into 10 equal pieces — each piece is one tenth (0.1). Now snap each of those pieces into 10 even smaller pieces. You now have 100 tiny pieces in total. Each tiny piece is one hundredth. That is a very small amount! Can you think of anything in real life that is split into 100 equal parts?

A hundredth is one part out of 100 equal parts. We write it as the fraction 1/100, which we read as 'one hundredth'. We can also write hundredths using a decimal point. In a decimal number, the digits after the point have special place values: • The first digit after the point is the tenths place (worth 1/10 each). • The second digit after the point is the hundredths place (worth 1/100 each). So the number 0.37 means: 0 ones, 3 tenths, and 7 hundredths. Think of it like money. In £0.37, the 3 means 3 tens of pence (30p) and the 7 means 7 pence. Together that is 37 pence out of 100 pence. This is exactly the same idea as hundredths! To turn a fraction out of 100 into a decimal, just write the number with two digits after the decimal point. For example: • 25/100 → 0.25 (2 tenths and 5 hundredths) • 9/100 → 0.09 (0 tenths and 9 hundredths — notice the zero holds the tenths place) • 60/100 → 0.60 (6 tenths and 0 hundredths)