Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A footpath is drawn 3 cm long on a map with a scale of 1 : 50 000. Work out the real length of the footpath, in metres.

2.Two quantities x and y are inversely proportional. When x = 2, the value of y is 15. Work out the value of y when x = 5.

3.There are 400 students at a school. 25% of them have a brother, 40% have a sister and 15% have both a brother and a sister. Work out how many of the students have neither a brother nor a sister.

4.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.

5.A hiker's distance from the start of the trail, in kilometres, is plotted against time, in minutes, since she set off. At t = 45 minutes she stops to rest, so her distance from the start is neither increasing nor decreasing at that instant. Which statement about the tangent to the distance–time graph at t = 45 minutes is correct?

6.The total cost, in pounds, of manufacturing a batch of components is plotted against the number of components produced. A tangent to this graph at a particular point has gradient 3.60. What does the value 3.60 represent?

7.A candle burns down at a constant rate. Its height, h cm, is plotted against time, t minutes, on a straight-line graph. The gradient of the line is −0.3. Which statement correctly describes what the gradient means?

8.Two mathematically similar rectangles have lengths in the ratio 3 : 5. The area of the smaller rectangle is 27 cm². Work out the area of the larger rectangle.

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

10.A stall sells bottles of juice. Two bottles cost £3.00, five bottles cost £7.50 and eight bottles cost £12.00. The cost, C pounds, is in a fixed ratio to the number of bottles, n. Write down a formula for C in terms of n.

11.A charity receives £360 in donations in January and £480 in donations in February. Write the amount received in January as a fraction of the amount received in February, giving your answer in its simplest form.

12.A scale model of a bridge is built at a scale of 1 : 120. The real bridge is 84 m long. Work out the length of the model, in centimetres.

13.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.

14.A savings account pays 3.5% compound interest each year. Bilal invests £1200. Work out how much interest, in total, he earns after 2 years, to the nearest penny.

15.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.