Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.y is directly proportional to x². When x = 3, y = 45. Construct the equation connecting x and y, then work out the value of y when x = 5.

2.A shop sells rope by the metre. 3 m costs £7.50 and 5 m costs £11.00. Does this data show that the cost is directly proportional to the length of rope bought? Choose the correct verdict and reason.

3.A road sign 3 m tall casts a shadow 5 m long. At the same time, a nearby lamppost casts a shadow 10 m long. Work out the height of the lamppost.

4.Write 75p : £1.50 as a ratio of whole numbers in its simplest form.

5.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.

6.A force of 250 N acts on an area of 0.5 m². Using pressure = force ÷ area, work out the pressure, in pascals.

7.A 1.5 kg bag of pasta costs £2.85 and a 2.4 kg bag of the same pasta costs £4.32. Work out which bag gives better value for money.

8.6 identical printers can print a batch of exam papers in 40 minutes, all working at the same rate. Working at the same rate, work out how many minutes 4 of these printers would take to print the same batch.

9.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.

10.A concert hall has 54 seats in total, of which 24 are reserved and the rest are free. Write the number of free seats as a fraction of the number of reserved seats. Give your answer in its simplest form.

11.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.

12.The volume of water in a paddling pool, in litres, is plotted against the time since the tap was turned on, in minutes. What are the units of the gradient of a tangent to this graph?

13.Amelia uses 2 kg of flour to bake 5 cakes. Using the same recipe, work out how many cakes she can bake with 6 kg of flour.

14.The strength of a radio signal, in units, is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the transmitter, in km. At a distance of 2 km the signal strength is 20 units. Construct the equation connecting signal strength S and distance d, then work out the distance at which the signal strength is 5 units.

15.A cup of tea is cooling. Its temperature, in °C, is plotted against time, in minutes, since it was poured. At t = 4 minutes, the gradient of the tangent to the graph is −3.2. What does this tell you about the tea at t = 4 minutes?