Question

If a cell divides every 4 hours, how many cells will there be after 20 hours? Show your work.

:
a) 16 cells
b) 32 cells
c) 64 cells
d) 128 cells

Answer 1

To determine the number of cells after 20 hours, divide the total time by the cell division time. Each division doubles the number of cells. After 5 divisions, there will be 32 cells.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine the number of cells after 20 hours, we need to divide the total time by the cell division time. Since a cell divides every 4 hours, we divide 20 by 4 to get a quotient of 5. This means that after 20 hours, there will be 5 divisions.

Now, let's calculate the number of cells after each division. Each division doubles the number of cells. So, if we start with 1 cell, after the first division, we have 2 cells, after the second division, we have 4 cells, and so on.

After 5 divisions, we will have 2^5 or 32 cells. Therefore, the correct answer is option (b) 32 cells.