The students receive half of the sheet paper.
Let x be the area of the sheet of paper.
Then, each student receive a paper that has an area of 0.5x.
If each student paint one fourth fo the paper they have.
So they paint 0.25 of the 0.5x paper.
This make it 0.25*0.5x = 0.125x.
Then, they colored 0.125 (or 1/8) of the original sheet of paper.
As the students receive half of the paper, we know that the answer will be less than 1.
If we do it in fractions we have:
- each student receives 1/2 of the sheet of paper.
- each student colored 1/4 of the 1/2 sheet of paper they have. Then (1/4)*(1/2)=1/8.
