Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A cyclist rides at an average speed of 24 km/h for 1 hour 15 minutes. Work out the distance travelled, in km.

2.Priya invests £750 in a savings account that pays simple interest. After 3 years, the account contains £840. Work out the annual rate of simple interest.

3.Priya is paid £58.50 for working 7.5 hours on a Saturday. Work out her rate of pay, in £ per hour.

4.Two quantities x and y are in direct proportion. When x = 8, the value of y is 20. Work out the value of y when x = 14.

5.It takes 2 identical pumps 10 hours to empty a flooded basement. Working at the same rate, work out how many hours 5 of these pumps would take to empty the same basement.

6.A garden centre has 90 rose bushes in stock. It receives a delivery that increases its stock of rose bushes by 20%. In the same week it sells 150 lavender bushes. Work out the new number of rose bushes, then write it as a fraction of the number of lavender bushes sold, giving your answer in its simplest form.

7.A train travels at a constant speed of 90 km/h. Work out the speed in m/s.

8.Given that 1 mile ≈ 1.6 km, work out a speed of 55 mph in km/h.

9.Write 45 minutes : 2 hours as a ratio in its simplest form.

10.The concentration of a pollutant in a lake, in arbitrary units, follows the recurrence C_{n+1} = 0.75C_n + 40, with C_0 = 500: each week, 25% of the pollutant breaks down naturally, and then a further 40 units enter the lake from run-off. An ecologist classifies the lake as safe once C_n first drops below 300. Find the first whole number of weeks after which the lake is safe.

11.A company had 8000 employees. The number of employees decreased by 5% in the first year, and then increased by 5% in the second year. Work out the number of employees at the end of the second year, to the nearest whole number.

12.A patient is given a dose of 200 mg of a drug. Each hour, 30% of the drug remaining in the bloodstream is eliminated, and then a further dose of 50 mg is given. Using the recurrence D_{n+1} = 0.7D_n + 50, with D_0 = 200, work out the amount of drug in the bloodstream after 2 hours.

13.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.

14.The depth of water in a tank, in cm, is recorded every 10 seconds: at t = 10, depth = 32; at t = 20, depth = 45; at t = 30, depth = 56. Use the most appropriate chord from these readings to estimate the instantaneous rate of change of depth at t = 20.

15.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.