How to Find the Reciprocal of a Negative Number?

Term fraction number means that number is written in form of a / b, where 'a' and 'b' are whole Numbers and b ≠ 0. Now if we simply look at any Whole Number, say 5. We observe that number 5 can also be written in the form of 5 / 1. Now we will compare above number with format of the fraction and find that a = 5 and b = 1. So we come to conclusion that every whole number can also be written as fraction number.

In order to find reciprocal of any fraction number, we will simply write numerator in place of denominator and denominator is written in place of numerator. Now what if given number is in form of negative number, let's see how to find the reciprocal of a negative number. Let us consider a negative number say -9. We say that -9 can also be read in the form of -9 / 1. Now if we try to write the number in its reciprocal form, we come to the conclusion that above given number can be written in form of its reciprocal as:

Reciprocal of -9 / 1 = 1 / (-9),

We observe that this form of writing any number is not in standard form. So we say that in order to convert it to standard form, we will multiply the numerator and denominator by (-1). Thus resultant number we get is -1 / 9.

Further we also observe that number so formed is not the fraction, as numerator is not the whole number but an Integer. Thus we say that it is in the form of p / q, where 'p' and 'q' are integers. So it is a rational number.