Which Number Is in the Tenths Place?

The tenths place is the place just to the right of the point in a decimal number. When you use one decimal, you express yourself with the precision of a tenth. $10$ tenths is the same as $1$ :

\begin{array}{l} 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 \\ + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 \\ = 1.0 \end{array}

0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 = 1.0

You might have watched diving or ski jumping on television. When the divers or ski jumpers receive style points, the points are often given with one or zero decimals. There are five judges who grade the jumpers. It can look like this:

Style points from the five judges in a ski jump

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Think About This

All numbers with one decimal behind the point has tenths. The tenths we have are

\begin{array}{l} 0.1 & , 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, \\ 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9 \end{array}

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

and can be put behind any number like this:

\begin{array}{l} 8.3 231.9 6384.5 \\ 1.2 45.7 60.8 . \end{array}

8.3 231.9 6384.5 1.2 45.7 60.8 .

As long as you have decimals, you always have tenths!

Here are a couple examples of how tenths exist between two consecutive integers on the real line:

Examples of tenths between two consecutive integers

Example 1

Take a look at the first line of numbers above. Find two numbers between 0 and 1.

There are nine numbers to choose between, for example $0.3$ and $0.7$ .

Example 2

Take a look at the second line of numbers above. Find two numbers between 68 and 69.

There are nine numbers to choose between, two of which are

68.2

and

68.5

Example 3

When you count tenths, which number comes after $10.9$ ?

As $10.9$ is one tenth to the left of $11$ , the answer becomes $11.0$ .

Think About This

Take a look at Example 3.

9

is the highest digit you can have in the tenths place. That’s why, when you need to find the number that comes after

10.9

, you have to increase the number to the left of the tenths place by

1

instead. Then you need to restart the digits in the tenths place, making the digit there

0

. That gives you this:

10.9 increased by 0.1 becomes 11.0 .

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