Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A concrete block exerts a force of 45 N on the ground through a base with an area of 0.05 m². Work out the pressure on the ground, in N/m².

2.A shop's daily profit, in pounds, is plotted against the price charged for an item, in pounds. A tangent to the profit graph at a price of £15 passes through the points (12, 540) and (18, 480). Work out the instantaneous rate of change of profit with respect to price at £15, and state whether profit is increasing or decreasing there.

3.A car travels at a constant speed. It travels 150 miles in 3 hours. At the same speed, work out how far it travels in 5 hours.

4.Two mathematically similar cylinders have heights in the ratio 3 : 4. Write the ratio of their volumes in its simplest form.

5.The exchange rate is £1 = €1.15. Convert £200 to euros.

6.Two printers' running costs are shown on separate straight-line graphs of total cost against number of pages printed. Printer A's graph has gradient £0.04 per page. Printer B's graph has gradient £0.05 per page. Work out how much cheaper it is to print 200 pages on Printer A than on Printer B, based on these running costs alone.

7.Two mathematically similar polygons have perimeters in the ratio 2 : 5. Write the ratio of their areas in its simplest form.

8.Two mathematically similar cylinders have volumes 64 cm³ and 216 cm³. Work out the ratio of the height of the smaller cylinder to the height of the larger cylinder, in simplest form.

9.A runner's speed is 8 m/s. Given that there are 3600 seconds in an hour and 1000 metres in a kilometre, work out the runner's speed in km/h.

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.An ice-cream van's daily takings, in £, are modelled by a curve plotted against the average temperature that day, in °C. At a temperature of 22°C, the gradient of the tangent to this curve is 14. What does this gradient tell you about the takings at 22°C?

12.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.

13.A cartographer is choosing a scale for a map to show a small park in as much detail as possible. Which of these scales would show the MOST detail — 1 : 500, 1 : 5000, or 1 : 50 000? Give the correct scale and reason.

14.A map has a scale of 1 : 40 000. A cycle path measures 7.5 cm on the map. Work out the real length of the cycle path, in kilometres.

15.y is inversely proportional to x. When x = 5, y = 8. Work out the value of y when x = 10.