Recipe Ratios

Pre-Algebra · Axiom Academy

Double a recipe, halve it, triple it — the amounts all change, but one thing refuses to: the ratio between the ingredients. One recipe, any number of batches A cookie recipe calls for 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of sugar. If six more friends show up you make more, and if it's just you, you make less. The amounts move — but if you want the cookies to taste the same every time, the relationship between flour and sugar has to stay locked. That fixed relationship is a ratio, and it's the whole idea here. Watch the batch dial sweep from a half-batch up to a triple-batch. The flour and sugar columns grow together, and the readout tracks how many cups of each you'd need — but keep your eye on the last number, the ratio. It never leaves 2 : 1 . The columns rise and fall together — that lockstep is what a constant ratio looks like. Drag the batch slider to make more or less. Watch the flour and sugar amounts move together, and check the ratio bar underneath: however much you scale up or down, the flour part stays exactly twice the sugar part. The two bars always split the same way — that constant split is the ratio 2 : 1. Every faithful batch lands on one line Here's the same idea as a picture. Sugar runs across, flour runs up. Drag the point to pick any batch you like — a tiny one near the corner or a giant one far out. Every honest batch lands on the same straight line through the origin , because flour is always twice the sugar. Try to drag off the line and it pulls you right back.

This is the written version of the interactive lesson above. See the full Pre-Algebra course.