Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.An acid solution has a concentration of 20%. The solution contains 40 g of acid, and the rest of the solution is water. Work out the mass of water in the solution.

2.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.

3.A cyclist's distance travelled, in metres, is recorded against time, in seconds. From t = 3 to t = 8 the distance increases from 12 m to 32 m. A tangent to the distance–time graph at t = 6 has gradient 3. Work out the average speed of the cyclist over the interval from t = 3 to t = 8.

4.Water flows into a tank at a constant rate. After 8 minutes the tank holds 200 litres. Write the ratio of time in minutes to volume in litres, in its simplest form.

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

6.The exchange rate is £1 = 1.28 US dollars. Convert £350 into US dollars.

7.A rectangular garden has its length and width in the ratio 5:3. Given that the perimeter of the garden is 64 m, work out the width of the garden.

8.The length of ribbon A is 5/12 of the length of ribbon B. Write the length of ribbon B as a fraction of the length of ribbon A.

9.The ratio of y to x is always 3 : 4. Write down which equation could represent this relationship.

10.In a choir of 30 singers, 40% are altos and the rest are sopranos. Write the number of sopranos as a fraction of the number of altos. Give your answer in its simplest form.

11.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.

12.A shade of paint is made by mixing blue paint and white paint. To make 5 litres of the shade, 2 litres of blue paint is used and the rest is white paint. Write the ratio of blue paint to white paint in its simplest form.

13.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.

14.A scale drawing of a car park has a scale of 1 : 300. On the drawing, the car park has an area of 15 cm². Work out the real area of the car park, in square metres.

15.A scale model of a shipping container is built at a scale of 1 : 30, using material with the same density as the real container. The model has a mass of 400 g. Work out the mass of the real container, giving your answer in kilograms.