Easy Tricks to Solve Additive and Multiplicative Inverse with Stories

Do you know an easy trick to solve Additive Inverse and Multiplicative Inverse Sums? One day, a girl had her interview and she reached 5 km ahead of her interview location. Now, she takes a U-turn and comes 5 km back to her spot. So, if we say she traveled + 5 km ahead and then came – 5 km back, what would be the sum of these two distances? Well, it will be 0 km. Now, if we do the reciprocal of the distance traveled, i.e., ⅕ km, and then multiply it with 5 km, we get “1” as our answer.

Do you know what this is all about? Let’s read Saumya’s story and understand how additive and multiplication inverse works with a story of Neha.

Story of Neha and Her Cat Lilly – Additive Inverse

One day, Neha went to the garden with her Cat friend Lilly. While meandering through the grass, she found that someone planted three rose plants on the exit path. Now, what she does is, remove “three” plants and keep them somewhere else.

If we see something here, “+3” are the plants on the exit gate, and “- 3” here means the plants are removed from the path. Now, if we want to know how many plants are there are at that spot at present, we see that it is 0, but how? See, the plants planted on the spot + plants plucked off from the spot = Zero plants

  =    + 3  + (- 3) = 0

This is how additive inverse works.

Here, we notice that the additive inverse of + 3 is – 3. Also, the sum of a positive number and the negative of the same number gives us “Zero.”

A Story of an Artist Namit for Additive Inverse

Namit is a famous painter of MNC society. One of the interesting things, people find in him is, he is moody, which means he does a lot of trials before making his actual painting. Also, he does everything in a fraction, i.e., by parts.

One day, he started drawing an image of Lord Buddha, he drew 1/3rd portion. He didn’t make it fine, so he erased it. Now, how much part was drawn by him actual? Well, the page is empty, i.e., zero draws.

So, summing up work for the present day, as:

He drew some part + He erased = drawn nothing

⅓ + (- ⅓)  =  0

Again, we understood additive inverse in simpler words.

Story of Lipika and her Weight-loss Training

Lipika wanted to reduce her weight and she found that day-by-day she is putting on her weight. One day, she went to check her weight and she got really sad to see, it was 80 kg.

Now, she expected that if she reduce 1/80th of her weight for 80 days, she will be able to see a “+ 1” result to show her hard work.

So, if we say,

Her actual weight * Weight she is reducing each day = She gets a “1” unit of the result as positive feedback.

80  *  1/80   =   1

This is how multiplicative inverse works.

Here, we notice that the multiplicative inverse of 80 is 1/80. Also, the product of a number and its reciprocal always results in unity, i.e., 1.

A Story of Travelling Expert for Multiplicative Inverse

You may find some more numbers like if we say, a person like decelerating his car by a magnitude of – 1/ 80 metre per square second. The second day, while going through a rough road, he encountered a big stone and decelerated his car at a very big magnitude. Can you imagine at what value? It was (- 80) metre per square second. Oh my God! Such a big value.

Now, if we wish to know the product of these two values, how we will state that?

Well, it is very simple, as we did in the above statement for the multiplicative inverse.

Decelerated car on the first day * Decelerated car on the second day = Unity

 => (- 1/80) * (- 80) = 1

Again we understood how multiplicative inverse works in real-life.

So, this is all about additive and multiplicative inverse in a storytelling method. You can create your own stories as a creator and learn this concept at your convenience. Found this concept interesting? You can also learn it in a fun way from Cuemath. You can also read more about Jennie Nguyen.