Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Foundation

1.Water flows into a tank at a constant rate. After 8 minutes the tank holds 200 litres. Write the ratio of time in minutes to volume in litres, in its simplest form.

2.Two taxi firms show their charges on straight-line graphs, with the cost in pounds on the vertical axis and the distance in miles on the horizontal axis. Firm A's line passes through (0, 4) and (5, 14). Firm B's line passes through (0, 6) and (5, 21). Work out which firm charges more per mile.

3.Two mathematically similar logos are printed on a poster. They have areas 20 cm² and 45 cm². Nadia says that the length scale factor from the smaller logo to the larger logo is 45 ÷ 20 = 2.25. Give a reason why Nadia is incorrect, and work out the correct length scale factor.

4.A garden centre sells two mathematically similar sacks of grass seed. The amount of lawn a sack can treat is proportional to the volume of seed inside it. The smaller sack is 20 cm tall and treats a lawn of area 30 m². The larger sack is 40 cm tall. A gardener needs to treat a lawn with an area of 500 m² using only the larger sacks. Work out the minimum number of larger sacks needed.

5.A charity shop and a school share collection-box money in the ratio 5 : 8. The charity shop receives £47.50. Work out how much the school receives.

6.Two cars travel at constant speeds. Car A travels 150 km in 3 hours. Car B travels 180 km in 4 hours. Which car is faster, and what is its speed?

7.A metal has a density of 7.8 g/cm³. Work out the density of the metal in kg/m³.

8.A mobile phone tariff is shown on a straight-line graph with the monthly cost, C pounds, on the vertical axis and the amount of data used, g gigabytes, on the horizontal axis. The line passes through (0, 10) and (8, 26). Work out the gradient and say what it represents.

9.A scale model of a bridge is built at a scale of 1 : 120. The real bridge is 84 m long. Work out the length of the model, in centimetres.

10.In a fruit bowl, the ratio of apples to oranges is 5 : 3. Work out what percentage of the fruit in the bowl is apples.

11.A graph shows y plotted against x. The graph is a curve that gets closer to both axes but never touches them, and y decreases as x increases. Write down whether this graph could show direct proportion, inverse proportion, or neither.

12.A force of 20 N acts on an area of 4 m². Using pressure = force ÷ area, work out the pressure, in pascals.

13.x × y is used to test whether two quantities are in inverse proportion. For the pairs x = 4, y = 15 and x = 6, y = 10, which statement is correct?

14.A shop sells ribbon by the metre. 2 m costs £3.00, 4 m costs £6.00, and 7 m costs £10.50. Does this data show that the cost is directly proportional to the length of ribbon bought? Choose the correct verdict and reason.

15.A straight-line graph shows the distance travelled, d kilometres, against the time taken, t hours, for a cyclist. The line passes through the origin and has a gradient of 18. Write down what the gradient of this line represents.