What is a $5:1$ ratio?
This is probably a really simple question but I feel it has two different answers. If I could get some guidance as to which is right the would be great.
I need to apply $1000$ N at two points, say A and B, at a $5:1$ ratio. I think it could either be: $\frac{1000}{5} = 200$. Therefore apply $1000$ and $200$ at the points. Or $5:1 = \frac{5}{6}:\frac{1}{6}$. Therfore apply $\frac{5}{6}$ of $1000$ at point A and $\frac{1}{6}$ of $1000$ at point B.
Which way is correct?
Thanks in advance.
$\endgroup$ 22 Answers
$\begingroup$When you "apply a ratio", you are usually splitting something up, or sharing it out. For example sharing $10$ sweets in a $1:1$ ratio between $2$ children. In this example you'd be sharing them evenly (which is what $1:1$ means), so you'd share them $5$ to $5$.
The method to calculate these isn't the first one you mentioned because in this case you end up with a total of $1200N$ of force, which is more than you started with - hence you're not "sharing". So your second method is correct.
$\endgroup$ 1 $\begingroup$Often to a chef a ratio comes very intuitively,m. For them 3:2 of water to yeast means 3 parts of water for every 2 parts of yeast. How many total parts are there here? Clearly 5. So we have five parts in our whole we can then divide our total content by 5 and multiply it by our desired number of parts in each ratio. For your question the total number of parts is 6 so the second is correct.
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