Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.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.

2.A recipe for 8 muffins needs 200 g of sugar. Sam wants to make 20 muffins for a bake sale, and he already has 350 g of sugar. Work out how many more grams of sugar he needs to buy.

3.A charity shop and a school share collection-box money in the ratio 5 : 8. The charity shop receives £47.50. Work out how much the school receives.

4.Leah puts £4000 into a savings account paying 3% compound interest each year. At the end of 2 years she takes out all of the money and spends £1500 of it on a laptop. Work out how much of the money she has left.

5.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.

6.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.

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

9.The cost, in pounds, of hiring a minibus is modelled against the number of passengers booked. A tangent to the cost graph at 20 passengers passes through the points (16, 184) and (24, 216). Work out the instantaneous rate at which the cost increases with each extra passenger, at 20 passengers.

10.Two quantities, P and Q, are in inverse proportion. A graph is drawn with P on the vertical axis and Q on the horizontal axis. Write down which description fits the shape of this graph.

11.A company's turnover was £128 000 in 2023 and £176 000 in 2024. Work out the multiplier that changes the 2023 turnover into the 2024 turnover.

12.On a straight-line graph the volume of water, V litres, in a tank is plotted on the vertical axis and the time, t minutes, on the horizontal axis. The line passes through (2, 50) and (6, 130). Work out the gradient of the line and give its units.

13.The density of a type of solid plastic is 0.9 g/cm³. Work out the mass of 0.5 m³ of the plastic, in kilograms.

14.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.

15.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.