Question

A particular type of cell quintuples in every hour. The function y=5^x can be used to find another number of cells after X hours if there is 1 hour. Identify a,b and if it is growth or decay

Answer 1

The given function is

`y=5^(x)`

Notice that this is an exponential function with a positive base, which means is a growth function.

From the equation we know that
`a=5` and
`b=1`, which are the base (rate) and exponent, respectively.

For 1 hours, we have

`y=5^(1)`

Therefore, the first hour there are 5 cells.