Question

a broth containing 1 million bacterial cells is treated with an antimicrobial agent that kills 90% of the cells in 1 minute. what is the minimum amount of time it will take before all the cells in the broth are dead? view available hint(s)for part a 3 minutes 5 minutes 7 minutes 10 minutes

Answer 1

It will take 2 minutes for all the cells in the broth to be dead.

Step-by-step explanation:

In this scenario, we are told that an antimicrobial agent kills 90% of the bacterial cells in 1 minute. Therefore, after 1 minute, there would be 10% of the original 1 million cells remaining, which is 100,000 cells. This means that after each minute, 10% of the previous number of cells would remain.

To calculate the minimum amount of time it will take before all the cells are dead, we need to determine how many times we need to multiply the initial number of cells (1 million) by 0.1 in order to reach 0.01 (which is essentially zero cells). This calculation can be done using logarithms:

log0.1(0.01) = 2

Therefore, it will take 2 minutes for all the cells in the broth to be dead.