Ratio, proportion and rates of change worksheet — GCSE Higher

1.A garden centre has 90 rose bushes in stock. It receives a delivery that increases its stock of rose bushes by 20%. In the same week it sells 150 lavender bushes. Work out the new number of rose bushes, then write it as a fraction of the number of lavender bushes sold, giving your answer in its simplest form.

2.A concrete block exerts a force of 45 N on the ground through a base with an area of 0.05 m². Work out the pressure on the ground, in N/m².

3.Write £3.60 : £2.40 as a ratio in its simplest form.

4.A textbook is reduced from £60 to £45. Work out the percentage reduction.

5.Work out the value of x when 4/x = 2/5.

6.The width, the length and the height of a box are in the ratio 3:4:5. The length of the box is 16 cm. Work out the height of the box.

7.Two broadband providers show their monthly cost on straight-line graphs, with the cost in pounds on the vertical axis and the data used in gigabytes on the horizontal axis. Provider X's line passes through (0, 15) and (100, 35). Provider Y's line passes through (0, 5) and (100, 45). Work out which provider is cheaper for a customer who uses 40 gigabytes in a month.

8.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.

9.A fruit squash is made by mixing squash and water. In a jug, 2/9 of the total volume is squash. A caterer makes up 4.5 litres of the squash mixture. Work out how many litres of squash are in the mixture.

10.A population of penguins on an island is 2400. The population is predicted to grow by 7% each year. Work out the predicted population after 2 years, to the nearest whole number.

11.There are 84 passengers on a double-decker bus. 35 of the passengers are adults and the rest are children. Write the number of adults as a fraction of the number of children. Give your answer in its simplest form.

12.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.

13.A coach journey is 372 miles in total. After a stop, the coach has travelled 217 miles. Write the distance still to travel as a fraction of the total journey. Give your answer in its simplest form.

14.A worker is paid £13.20 per hour. Work out this rate of pay in pence per minute.

15.The concentration of a pollutant in a lake, in arbitrary units, follows the recurrence C_{n+1} = 0.75C_n + 40, with C_0 = 500: each week, 25% of the pollutant breaks down naturally, and then a further 40 units enter the lake from run-off. An ecologist classifies the lake as safe once C_n first drops below 300. Find the first whole number of weeks after which the lake is safe.