Subscriber Only Resources
Access this article and hundreds more like it with a subscription to DynaMath magazine.
STANDARDS
CCSS: 5.NBT.B.7, MP5, MP6, MP7
TEKS: 5.3E
MULTIPLYING DECIMALS
Cuddly Cafés
Visitors dine in the company of furry friends at animal cafés around the world
Yuri Kochetkov/EPA/Shutterstock
Customers at the People and Cats café in Moscow, Russia
At a small café in London, I enjoyed tea and
At Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium, fluffy felines roam about. They leap on shelves, play with toys, or nap in baskets. It’s one of the many animal cafés that have popped up all over the world in recent years.
Eugene Hoshiko/AP Images
A customer holds a snake at a café in Tokyo, Japan.
The trend began in 1998, when Taiwan opened its first cat café. Since then, the idea has taken off. The animals can vary widely. You can sip tea with cats, dogs, raccoons, owls, rabbits, hedgehogs, and even snakes!
At these cafés, visitors can pet the animals, feed them treats, or play with them. Some places even let patrons rent critters to go for walks in nearby parks. The animals’ comfort and safety is a
“We’re very strict on ‘the cats do as they please’ policy,” says Jenny Smith from Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium. Even so, “we love seeing how happy people are when the cats jump on laps and pay them a visit.”
What to Do
You can multiply a decimal by a whole number almost the same way that you multiply two whole numbers. When multiplying with decimals, it’s important to pay close attention to place value. Place value is the value of a digit based on its location in a number.
Example
Multiply 3.3 by 5
• Pretend the decimals are not there. Remove any decimal points and align the digits vertically by place value. Then multiply.
• Count the number of decimal places to the right of the decimal point for each of the factors, and add them for the total.
• Starting from the smallest place value on the right, move the decimal point to the left the total number of places you found above.
Estimate to check your answer.
3.3 is close to 3, and 3 × 5 = 15
Since 15 is close to 16.5, 16.5 is a reasonable answer.
So 3.3 × 5 = 16.5
What to Do
You can multiply a decimal by a whole number almost the same way that you multiply two whole numbers. When multiplying with decimals, it’s important to pay close attention to place value. Place value is the value of a digit based on its location in a number.
Example
Multiply 3.3 by 5
• Pretend the decimals are not there. Remove any decimal points and align the digits vertically by place value. Then multiply.
• Count the number of decimal places to the right of the decimal point for each of the factors, and add them for the total.
• Starting from the smallest place value on the right, move the decimal point to the left the total number of places you found above.
Estimate to check your answer.
3.3 is close to 3, and 3 × 5 = 15
Since 15 is close to 16.5, 16.5 is a reasonable answer.
So 3.3 × 5 = 16.5
Now You Try It
It costs $16.18 in U.S. dollars per person to visit a cat café in Singapore for 2 hours. How much would the visit cost a family of 3?
At the snake café at the Tokyo Snake Center in Japan, visitors can pay an extra fee to touch and hold the snakes. It costs $5.07 in U.S. dollars per person to hold 2 snakes. It costs twice as much to hold 4 snakes. How much does it cost to hold 4 snakes?
It costs $16.55 in U.S. dollars for a 3-hour visit with more than 20 Siberian huskies at TrueLove at Neverland in Bangkok, Thailand. If you visited 5 times, each time for 3 hours, how much would you spend?
A. Visitors to Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium can buy a pot of tea for 1 person for 3.23 U.S. dollars. One U.S. dollar equals 0.77 British pounds. How much would a pot of tea for 1 person cost in British pounds?
B. A teapot for 2 costs $3.87. How much would it cost in British pounds?
C. Is it a better deal to order a teapot for 2 or 2 teapots for 1? Explain.