Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.In a fruit bowl, the ratio of apples to oranges is 5 : 3. Work out what percentage of the fruit in the bowl is apples.

2.A cyclist travels 18 km in 45 minutes. Work out the average speed, in km/h.

3.A furniture designer makes a scale model of a wardrobe using a scale of 1 : 8. The real wardrobe is 2.4 m tall and 1.2 m wide. Work out the perimeter of the front face of the model wardrobe, in centimetres.

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

5.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.

6.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.

7.A coach travels the 54 miles from London to Brighton in 1 hour 30 minutes. Work out the average speed of the coach, in mph.

8.Two mathematically similar jugs have heights 8 cm and 12 cm. The smaller jug holds 200 ml when it is full. Work out how much the larger jug holds when it is full.

9.The height of water in a tank, h metres, t minutes after a tap is opened is modelled by h = 0.02t² + 0.5. Estimate the instantaneous rate of change of the height at t = 10, using the gradient of the chord joining t = 9 and t = 11.

10.A recipe uses flour, sugar and butter in the ratio 8 : 3 : 5. Write the ratio of flour to the rest of the mixture (sugar and butter combined) in its simplest form.

11.A tank is filled at a rate of 3 litres every 2 minutes. Given that 1 litre = 1000 cm³, work out the flow rate in cm³ per minute.

12.Paint costs £14.40 for every 20 m² of wall it covers. Assuming the same rate, work out the cost of the paint needed to cover 56 m² of wall.

13.y is directly proportional to √x. When x = 4, y = 8. Construct the equation connecting x and y, then work out the value of y when x = 9.

14.After a 20% discount, a jacket costs £48. Work out the original price of the jacket.

15.A delivery driver travels 45 km in the first 30 minutes of a journey, and then a further 75 km in the next 1 hour. Work out her average speed for the whole journey, in km/h.