Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.Before a charity campaign, donations were £6400 per month. Donations grew by 8% in the first year after the campaign, and then fell by 3% in the second year as interest faded. Work out the amount donated per month at the end of the second year, to the nearest pound.

2.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.

3.A car is bought for £17,500. Its value decreases by 12% in the first year, and by a further 10% of its reduced value in the second year. Work out the value of the car at the end of the second year, giving your answer to the nearest pound.

4.A shop sells identical pens. The total cost, C pence, of n pens is given by C = 12n. Write the ratio n : C in its simplest form.

5.A population of penguins on an island is 2400. The population is predicted to grow by 7% each year. Work out the predicted population after 2 years, to the nearest whole number.

6.A metal alloy is made from copper and tin in the ratio 9:1. Write the mass of tin as a fraction of the mass of copper, in its simplest form.

7.The cost of manufacturing a spherical container is proportional to the cube of its radius. A container of radius 3 cm costs £54 to manufacture. Construct the equation connecting cost C and radius r, then work out the cost of a container of radius 5 cm.

8.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.

9.A model railway is built at a scale where the ratio of model length to real length is 1 : 76. Given that a real carriage is 20.6 metres long, work out the length of the model carriage in centimetres, to 1 decimal place.

10.A fruit punch is made from orange juice, pineapple juice and lemonade in the ratio 5:3:2. A jug holds 3.5 litres of punch in total. Work out the volume of pineapple juice needed.

11.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.

12.A cyclist travels d kilometres in t hours. Write down an expression, in terms of d and t, for the cyclist's average speed in km/h.

13.A map has a scale of 1 : 25 000. Two towns are 5 km apart in real life. Work out the distance between the towns on the map, in centimetres.

14.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.

15.A firework rocket's height above the ground, in metres, t seconds after launch, is modelled by h = 30t − 5t². Use a chord between t = 1 second and t = 3 seconds to estimate the instantaneous rate of change of the height at t = 2 seconds, in m/s.