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Suppose a culture of 500 bacteria is placed in a dish, and the culture doubled every hour. How many bacteria will be left after ten hours?

a. 5000
b. 1000
c. 256000
d. 1024

User Bovenson
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1 Answer

2 votes

Final answer:

After ten hours, a culture that started with 500 bacteria and doubled every hour will have grown to 512,000 bacteria, using the formula for exponential growth.

Step-by-step explanation:

If a culture of 500 bacteria is placed in a dish, and the culture doubles every hour, we can calculate the number of bacteria remaining after ten hours using the formula for exponential growth, which is \( N = N_0 \times 2^{t} \), where \( N \) is the final amount, \( N_0 \) is the initial amount, and \( t \) is the number of doubling times.

Here, the initial amount \( N_0 = 500 \) bacteria, and the culture doubles every hour for ten hours, so \( t = 10 \).

To find the number of bacteria after ten hours, we calculate:

\( N = 500 \times 2^{10} = 500 \times 1024 = 512,000 \) bacteria.

Thus, after ten hours there will be 512,000 bacteria present in the culture. This is not one of the options provided in the multiple-choice question, suggesting a possible error in the options or the question's premise.

User M Abbas
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