Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.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.

2.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.

3.A force of 250 N acts on an area of 0.5 m². Using pressure = force ÷ area, work out the pressure, in pascals.

4.A savings account pays 3.5% compound interest each year. Bilal invests £1200. Work out how much interest, in total, he earns after 2 years, to the nearest penny.

5.A cyclist rides 19.3 km in 47 minutes. Work out her average speed, in km/h, to 1 decimal place.

6.A statue exerts a downward force of 68.4 N on its base, which has an area of 2.85 m². Work out the pressure that the statue exerts on its base, in N/m².

7.A charity collects donations from adults and children in the ratio 5:2. Altogether, £238 is collected. Work out how much more the adults donate than the children.

8.A water butt is being filled from a hosepipe at a constant rate while a small leak drains water out at a constant rate, giving a constant net rate of change. The volume of water in the butt, V litres, is shown on a straight-line graph against time, t minutes. The line passes through the points (5, 20) and (15, 60). The butt is empty at t = 0. Work out how many minutes it takes to reach a volume of 100 litres.

9.6 identical printers can print a batch of exam papers in 40 minutes, all working at the same rate. Working at the same rate, work out how many minutes 4 of these printers would take to print the same batch.

10.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.

11.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.

12.A fixed job of fitting a solar array is shared between installers, and the time taken is inversely proportional to the number of installers working on it at once. With 4 installers the job takes 18 hours. Construct the equation connecting time T and number of installers n, then work out how long it would take with 6 installers.

13.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.

14.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.

15.A straight line passes through the points (1, 20) and (5, 8). Work out the gradient of the line.