If Carey bought 184 pounds of fertilizer and each segment of her lawn requires 12 1/2 pounds, what operation would be necessary to determine how many segments could be fertilized?

To determine how many segments of the lawn can be covered with the fertilizer that Carey bought, division is the appropriate operation to use. This is because Carey has a total of 184 pounds of fertilizer, and she knows that each segment of her lawn requires 12.5 pounds.

By dividing the total amount of fertilizer (184 pounds) by the amount needed for each segment (12.5 pounds), you can calculate the total number of segments that can be fertilized. The division will yield the quotient, which represents the total segments that can be fully covered with the available fertilizer.

In this context, addition, multiplication, and subtraction do not apply because they do not provide a method to distribute the total amount of fertilizer into segments of a specific size. Therefore, using division allows you to find out exactly how many complete segments can be fertilized with the available amount of fertilizer.