Answer:

Explanation:
We must use the exponential growth formula:

Where
P is the population of bacteria as a function of time
b is the initial population of bacteria.
r is the growth rate
t is the time in hours
We know that the initial amount of bacteria is 2000. Then
Then

After t = 4 hours the population P was 2600. Then we substitute these values in the equation and solve for r.


Now we can write the equation for this problem as:

For t = 17 hours the amount of bacteria will be:

