Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.Maya buys a vintage car for £15000. Its value is expected to increase by 4% each year for 2 years. She then plans to sell the car and use £2000 of the money from the sale to buy a trailer. Work out how much money she will have left after selling the car and buying the trailer.

2.A concrete block exerts a force of 45 N on the ground through a base with an area of 0.05 m². Work out the pressure on the ground, in N/m².

3.Two investors put money into a business in the ratio 3:5. The first investor puts in £1,200. Work out the total amount invested by both investors.

4.A trust fund contains £8000. Each year, 5% interest is added, and then £600 is paid out to a charity. Work out the amount remaining in the fund after 2 years.

5.A laptop costs £800 when new. Its value decreases by 25% of its value at the start of each year. Work out how much value the laptop loses in the second year.

6.A vehicle is worth £18000. Its value decreases by 15% each year. Using the recurrence V_{n+1} = 0.85V_n, with V_0 = 18000, find the first whole number of years after which the vehicle's value drops below £10000.

7.A 1.5 kg bag of pasta costs £2.85 and a 2.4 kg bag of the same pasta costs £4.32. Work out which bag gives better value for money.

8.The manufacturing cost of a specialist lens, in pounds, is proportional to the square root of its diameter, in millimetres. A lens of diameter 9 mm costs £12 to manufacture. Construct the equation connecting cost C and diameter d, then work out the cost of manufacturing a lens of diameter 16 mm.

9.The exchange rate is £1 = 1.28 US dollars. Convert £350 into US dollars.

10.A conversion graph between kilometres and miles passes through the origin and the point (50, 31), with the number of kilometres on the horizontal axis and the number of miles on the vertical axis. Work out the number of miles equivalent to 1 kilometre.

11.The total cost, in pounds, of manufacturing a batch of components is plotted against the number of components produced. A tangent to this graph at a particular point has gradient 3.60. What does the value 3.60 represent?

12.A cyclist's distance travelled, in metres, is recorded against time, in seconds. From t = 3 to t = 8 the distance increases from 12 m to 32 m. A tangent to the distance–time graph at t = 6 has gradient 3. Work out the average speed of the cyclist over the interval from t = 3 to t = 8.

13.The strength of a radio signal, in units, is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the transmitter, in km. At a distance of 2 km the signal strength is 20 units. Construct the equation connecting signal strength S and distance d, then work out the distance at which the signal strength is 5 units.

14.Two mathematically similar cylinders have heights in the ratio 3 : 4. Write the ratio of their volumes in its simplest form.

15.The height of a candle, in cm, is measured as it burns: t = 0 min, height = 20.0; t = 3 min, height = 18.7; t = 5 min, height = 17.5; t = 6 min, height = 16.6; t = 7 min, height = 15.4; t = 9 min, height = 13.4. Which pair of readings gives the best estimate of the instantaneous rate of change of the height at t = 6 minutes, and why?