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Contributor: Danielle Childers. Lesson ID: 10769
You can't have dessert until you finish your math! How about making dessert using math? Ratios help you figure how much of each ingredient you need. Play online games and earn cookie time (sans ants)!
Are you as strong as an ant? That might sound like a silly question; of course you are stronger than an ant!
What if you made a comparison of how big an ant is to how strong it is, then of how big you are compared to your strength?
An ant can lift 10 to 50 times its own weight!
That would be equivalent to a 200 pound person lifting 2,000 pounds or more over his head!
Not possible, even in the world of Olympic weight lifting. The average human can lift his or her own body weight, give or take five to ten pounds.
It means when you compare an ant to a human in terms of the amount of strength or power in relation to body size, an ant is stronger than a human.
These types of comparisons are commonly referred to in mathematical terms as ratios.
We could write the above as a ratio to show the relationship between the strength-to-weight of an ant and the strength-to-weight of a person:
To get a great review of ratios and how they are used to show proportions and comparisons, visit this site about Ratios from mathisfun.com.
You will be making some yummy Chocolate Crispies later in the lesson, so you better work hard to build your appetite!
One more thing to remember is that ratios can be written 3 different ways:
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