Final answer:
The culture of bacteria decreases exponentially when an antibiotic is introduced, but the exact number of bacteria after hours cannot be determined without additional information.
Step-by-step explanation:
The growth of bacteria in a culture can be modeled using exponential decay. In this case, the introduction of an antibiotic causes the number of bacteria to decrease exponentially. Let's assume that the initial number of bacteria is 60,000. After hours, the number of bacteria decreases to a certain value, which we need to find.
Exponential decay can be represented by the formula N = N0 * e-kt, where N is the final number of bacteria, N0 is the initial number of bacteria, k is the decay constant, and t is the time in hours.
Since the question doesn't provide the value for k or the time in hours, it is not possible to calculate the exact number of bacteria after hours. However, we can use the given information to find the value of k and then use it to determine the number of bacteria after hours.
The important concept of exponential growth is that the growth rate, the number of organisms added in each reproductive generation, is itself increasing. This means that the population size is increasing at a greater and greater rate. After 24 cycles of doubling, the population would have increased from 1000 to more than 16 billion bacteria.