Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A laptop bag has a mass of 2.4 kg. A school bag has a mass of 3.6 kg. Write the mass of the laptop bag as a fraction of the mass of the school bag, giving your answer in its simplest form.

2.A car uses fuel at a constant rate. It uses 24 litres of fuel to travel 300 km. Assuming the same rate, work out how many litres of fuel are needed for a journey of 175 km.

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.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.

5.A runner's speed is 8 m/s. Given that there are 3600 seconds in an hour and 1000 metres in a kilometre, work out the runner's speed in km/h.

6.Aisha invests £3200 in Account A, which pays 5% compound interest each year. She also invests £3200 in Account B, which pays 3% simple interest each year. Work out how much more Account A is worth than Account B after 2 years.

7.Two mathematically similar water bottles have a volume scale factor of 8 from the smaller bottle to the larger bottle. Work out the surface area scale factor from the smaller bottle to the larger bottle.

8.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.

9.The value of a rare coin increases by 12% each year. The coin is currently worth £270. Work out the value of the coin after 2 years, giving your answer to the nearest penny.

10.A greenhouse's temperature, in °C, is recorded every hour during the day: 09:00, 15.0; 10:00, 18.4; 11:00, 20.1; 12:00, 19.8; 13:00, 17.2. Work out between which two consecutive readings the instantaneous rate of change of the temperature is most likely to have been zero.

11.In a box of pens, 3/7 of the pens are blue and the rest are black. Write down the ratio of the number of blue pens to the number of black pens, in its simplest form.

12.Two quantities are connected by the formula y = 0.8x. Write down the ratio y : x in its simplest form.

13.The cost of manufacturing a spherical container is proportional to the cube of its radius. A container of radius 3 cm costs £54 to manufacture. Construct the equation connecting cost C and radius r, then work out the cost of a container of radius 5 cm.

14.The volume of fuel remaining in a storage tank, in thousands of litres, is plotted against time, in hours, since a leak was detected. A tangent to the graph at t = 2 hours has gradient −8.75 thousand litres per hour. A tangent at t = 8 hours has gradient −3.5 thousand litres per hour. Work out by what factor the instantaneous rate of change is greater in size at t = 2 hours than at t = 8 hours.

15.A water tank is a cuboid measuring 30 cm × 20 cm × 10 cm. The tank is full of water. Work out how many litres of water it holds.