Teaching Proportions Using Ant Trivia

Proportions are as fun a subject to teach as they are important to learn. Armed with the knowledge of how to setup and solve proportions, students can tackle all varieties of real life phenomena. The purpose of this post is to add some variety to your proportions by introducing trivia about ants.

The majority of the trivia about ants is taken from the following website 

 Trivia Fact 1:

It is estimated that at any time there are more than one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) ants on the planet.

Possible Proportion Question:

If there are one quadrillion ants for every 7 billion humans, how many ants per human?

Trivia Fact 2:

The average life span of an ant is 45 to 65 days.

Possible Proportion Question:

How many total ant lifespans are equal to one human lifespan of 80 years?

Trivia Fact 3:

Ants are able to lift things 20 times their own weight.

Possible Proportion Question:

If an ant can lift 20 times their own weight how much could a human, with the strength of an ant, lift if the human weighted 150 pounds?

Trivia Fact 4:

An ant brain has about 250,000 brain cells. A human brain has 10,000 million

Possible Proportion Question:

How many ants would it take to equal the number brain cells in one human brain?

I will be creating a worksheet based on this Ant exercise sometime in the future.