Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A trust fund contains £8000. Each year, 5% interest is added, and then £600 is paid out to a charity. Work out the amount remaining in the fund after 2 years.

2.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.

3.Two mathematically similar triangular flags have areas in the ratio 4 : 25. The height of the smaller flag is 6 cm. Work out the height of the larger flag.

4.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.

5.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.

6.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.

7.A scale drawing of a garden uses a scale of 1 : 20. Write down a formula for the real length, L metres, in terms of the length on the drawing, d centimetres, given that 1 metre = 100 centimetres.

8.Two mathematically similar picture frames have perimeters 30 cm and 45 cm. The area of the smaller frame is 40 cm². Work out the area of the larger frame.

9.It takes 2 identical pumps 10 hours to empty a flooded basement. Working at the same rate, work out how many hours 5 of these pumps would take to empty the same basement.

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

11.A cyclist travels d kilometres in t hours. Write down an expression, in terms of d and t, for the cyclist's average speed in km/h.

12.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.

13.A machine fills bottles at a constant rate. It fills 18 bottles in 3 minutes. Working at the same rate, work out how many bottles the machine fills in 8 minutes.

14.A sculptor makes two mathematically similar statues. The smaller statue is 20 cm tall and 80 ml of varnish covers its surface. The larger statue is 50 cm tall. Work out how much varnish is needed to cover the surface of the larger statue.

15.A conversion graph between kilometres and miles passes through the origin and the point (50, 31), with the number of kilometres on the horizontal axis and the number of miles on the vertical axis. Work out the number of miles equivalent to 1 kilometre.