Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A furniture maker builds two mathematically similar bookcases. The smaller bookcase is 40 cm tall and uses 2 m² of wood. The larger bookcase is 60 cm tall. Work out the area of wood needed for the larger bookcase, giving your answer in m².

2.A dog walker's charge, C pounds, for walking a dog for m minutes is shown on a straight-line graph. The line passes through the points (20, 14) and (50, 26). Work out the charge for a 65-minute walk.

3.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.

4.A map has a scale of 1 : 20 000. A different map of the same area has a scale of 1 : 80 000. A lake's shoreline is drawn 5 cm long on the first map. Work out the length of the same shoreline on the second map, in centimetres.

5.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.

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

7.A lorry is carrying a load of mass m tonnes. Given that 1 tonne = 1000 kg, write down an expression for the mass of the load in kilograms.

8.A greenhouse's temperature, in °C, is recorded every hour during the day: 09:00, 15.0; 10:00, 18.4; 11:00, 20.1; 12:00, 19.8; 13:00, 17.2. Work out between which two consecutive readings the instantaneous rate of change of the temperature is most likely to have been zero.

9.A map has a scale of 2 cm : 5 km. A footpath measures 8 cm on the map. Work out the real length of the footpath, in kilometres.

10.A jumper costs £45 at Shop A, where it is reduced by 20%. The same jumper costs £34 at Shop B, where a further 10% reduction is then applied. Work out the difference between the two reduced prices.

11.A company's turnover this year is £180,000. Last year's turnover was £120,000. Write down this year's turnover as a percentage of last year's turnover.

12.A curve has equation y = x² + 2x. Work out the average rate of change of y with respect to x over the interval from x = 1 to x = 4.

13.A car is bought for £12000. Its value falls by 15% in the first year and by 10% in each year after that. Work out the value of the car 3 years after it was bought.

14.A car uses fuel at a constant rate. It uses 24 litres of fuel to travel 300 km. Assuming the same rate, work out how many litres of fuel are needed for a journey of 175 km.

15.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.