Catherine and Poppy from Stoke by
Nayland Middle School made a good start on this problem, and Kijung
from Wind Point Elementary School found that:
Not all of Jamie's examples were right.
To be correct, one of the unit fractions must have a denominator
which is 1 more than the denominator of the original unit fraction,
and the other unit fraction must have a denominator which is the
product of the other two denominators:
$$ \frac{1}{n} = \frac{1}{n+1}+\frac{1}{n(n+1)}$$
Here are some other examples that work:
$ \frac{1}{5} = \frac{1}{6}+\frac{1}{30}$
$ \frac{1}{6} = \frac{1}{7}+\frac{1}{42}$
$ \frac{1}{105} = \frac{1}{106}+\frac{1}{11130}$
$\frac{1}{8}$ can also be expressed as the sum of two unit
fractions in several ways:
$\frac{1}{8} = \frac{1}{9} +\frac{1}{72}$
$\frac{1}{8} = \frac{1}{10} +\frac{1}{40}$
$\frac{1}{8} = \frac{1}{11} + \frac{1}{n}$ is not possible
$\frac{1}{8} = \frac{1}{12} +\frac{1}{24}$
Felix from Condover Primary acutely observed that unit
fractions with denominators which are prime numbers
can only be written in one way as the sum of
two distinct unit fractions.
Can unit fractions with composite denominators always be written in
more than one way as the sum of two unit fractions?