Week 336 (1st March 2024)

At the supermarket there are 240 cans of drink on a shelf.  

Each can contains cola or lemonade or orange.  

The number of cans of cola : the number of cans of lemonade : the number of cans of orange = 5 : 3 : 2 

1/2 of the cans of lemonade and 1/12 of the cans of orange are removed from the shelf.  

Work out the number of cans of cola as a percentage of the total number of cans of drink remaining on the shelf. 

Answer: 

To start with we can work out how many individual cans of cola, lemonade and orange there are by sharing 240 out into the ration 5:3:2

5+3+2 = 10          240/10 = 24

Individual cans (5 x 24) : (3 x 24) : (2 x 24) = 120 : 72 : 48

We can then work out ½ of the cans of lemonade: 72 x 0.5 = 36 cans

Then 1/12 of the cans of orange: 48 x 1/12 = 4 cans

Now we can find the total cans left of the shelf: 240 – (36 + 4) = 200

Finally to find the number of cola cans as a percentage of the cans left on the shelf we can put a fraction with total cola cans over remaining total cans:

120/200 = 3/5 = 0.6     Then to find as a percentage we multiply by 100…    0.6 x 100 = 60%