Q:

Purpose of dividing by 1 javascript

I was working on a simple programming exercise my teacher gave us, and I noticed several times that in Javascript, I have to divide a number by 1, otherwise it will return a ridiculous value. Any explanations?
I have a jsfiddle 
http://jsfiddle.net/TpNay/1/
var widthrand=Math.floor(Math.random()*widthRange);
width=widthrand +  document.getElementById('width').value/1;
If you look at line 22, and take out the divide by 1, and click generate, it will return ridiculous lengths
Thanks

A:

It makes JavaScript type juggle forcing the value of document.getElementById('width').value to become numeric. 
A better way to do it would be parseInt(document.getElementById('width').value, 10)

