Change 1:4 to 1:2 and the squash gets stronger. Pour it yourself and watch the colour change.
Start mixingWhen you mix squash 1 : 4 with water, those numbers aren't how many millilitres are in your glass. They're the recipe: for every 1 splash of squash, you add 4 of water. One small glass or a giant jug — same recipe, same taste.
That's the heart of it. A ratio tells you the relative amounts — how the parts compare to each other — and stays silent about the totals. Double everything and the drink tastes exactly the same, because the comparison hasn't moved. A teaspoon of squash to four teaspoons of water, or a whole cup of squash to four cups of water: wildly different amounts of liquid, one identical drink. Hold onto that, because almost every trap with ratios comes from forgetting it.
Set the parts of squash and water. The glass blends to the real mixed colour, the ladder on the right shows the recipe, and the readout tells you exactly how much of the drink is squash.
1/5 of the glass is squash — the classic mix.
Already in its simplest form.
1 part squash : 4 parts water means 1 part out of every 5 is squash — so 1/5 of what you drink is squash, not 1/4. (The colour is illustrative; the fractions are exact.)
Play with it for a moment and watch what each control does. Drop the water from 4 down to 2 and the glass darkens — fewer water parts means squash is a bigger slice of a smaller whole, so the drink turns stronger. Push water up to 8 and the colour fades toward pale: same single splash of squash, now lost in far more water. The squash amount never changed — what changed is how it compares to the water. That comparison is the ratio, and it's the only thing that decides the taste.
That little colon is read as the word "to". So 1 : 4 is "one to four" — one part of the first thing for every four of the second. The numbers are called the parts, and they're always whole splashes of the same size: one scoop of squash to four identical scoops of water.
Order matters. Squash to water as 1 : 4 is a gentle drink. Flip it to 4 : 1 — four parts squash to one part water — and you've made something so strong it'd make you wince. Same numbers, opposite recipe. Always check which quantity each number belongs to before you trust it. A handy habit: write the labels above the numbers, like squash : water = 1 : 4, so you never lose track of which is which.
And ratios aren't stuck at two things. A fruit punch you mix 2 : 3 : 1 — two parts orange, three parts apple, one part fizzy — is a three-part ratio, read "two to three to one". The same idea scales to as many ingredients as your recipe needs; you just keep comparing parts.
Ratio A way of comparing two (or more) amounts by how many parts of each you have. It tells you the relative sizes, not the actual totals — 1 : 4 and 25 : 100 are the very same recipe.
This one trips almost everyone, so let's settle it for good. The ratio 1 : 4 has two numbers — but to turn it into a fraction of the whole drink, you need the total number of parts. Add them up: 1 + 4 = 5 parts in the glass altogether.
5 equal parts: 1 squash and 4 water. So 1 out of 5 parts is squash — that's 1/5, and 4/5 is water.
The trap: "1 : 4 means 1/4 is squash."
Nope. The 4 is the number of water parts, not the total. The denominator of the fraction is 1 + 4 = 5, never just one of the numbers. A ratio of a : b makes the first thing a / (a + b) of the whole.
So a ratio and a fraction are cousins, not twins. A ratio compares part to part (squash to water). A fraction compares one part to the whole (squash to the entire glass). Knowing the difference is what stops you mixing a drink five times too strong.
Try it on a fresh example. A smoothie is blended 3 : 2, mango to yoghurt. How much of the cup is mango? Add the parts: 3 + 2 = 5. Mango is 3 of those 5, so 3/5 of the smoothie is mango and 2/5 is yoghurt. Notice the two fractions add up to 5/5 — the whole cup — which is your built-in check that you split it right. If your part-fractions don't add to 1, something slipped.
Tap the 2 : 8 button in the mixer above and the glass doesn't change one bit — the drink is exactly as strong as 1 : 4. That's because they're equivalent ratios: ratios that look different but mean the same recipe.
The rule is friendly. You can multiply or divide both parts by the same number and the ratio stays the same, because you've scaled the whole recipe up or down evenly:
1 : 4 ×2→ 2 : 8 ×3→ 6 : 24 — all the same drink.
And backwards: 10 : 40 ÷10→ 1 : 4. When you've divided until the parts share no common factor, the ratio is in its simplest form — the tidiest way to write the recipe.
Simplifying a ratio is just like simplifying a fraction: find the biggest number that divides into both parts and divide them both by it. So 15 : 25 shares a factor of 5, giving 3 : 5. The mixer's readout simplifies live, so pour a messy mix like 4 : 6 and watch it tidy itself to 2 : 3.
Equivalent ratios are also how you find a missing amount — the trick behind scaling any recipe. Say cordial is 3 : 5, syrup to water, and you've measured 12 spoons of syrup. Line the recipe up against your batch: 3 : 5 = 12 : ?. The syrup went from 3 to 12, which is ×4, so the water must do the same jump: 5 × 4 = 20 spoons. Whatever you do to one part, you do to the other — that's the whole secret to keeping the taste identical at any size.
Once you spot ratios, you'll see them everywhere amounts have to stay in step with each other. A ratio is really a promise to hold a relationship steady while the sizes change — that's exactly what a cook scaling a recipe, a cartographer drawing a map, and a chemist diluting a solution all need.
Pancakes for two use eggs to flour at 1 : 100 (1 egg per 100 g). Cooking for six is three times as many — so multiply both parts by 3: 3 eggs : 300 g. The pancakes still taste right because the ratio held.
A map marked 1 : 25 000 means 1 cm on the paper stands for 25 000 cm in real life — that's 250 m. The whole map is just one giant ratio shrinking the world to fit your hands.
Paints, dyes and even photo filters mix in ratios. More red parts to blue parts shifts the purple warmer; keep the ratio and you can mix the exact same shade in a bucket or a teaspoon.
Squash, cordial, plant food, cleaning spray — anything you dilute lists a ratio. It's the recipe that keeps the strength the same no matter how big the jug.
Four questions. Pick an answer and it'll tell you why right away — no pressure, just see what's stuck.
a : b compares parts, not totals. Same recipe in a glass or a jug.
a : b means a + b parts, so the first thing is a/(a+b) — never just 1/b.
Add the parts, divide the total, multiply each part back. Done.