Question

A potato salad containing 3,500 bacteria, with a generation time of 15 minutes, sits in the sun for 2 hours before being assayed in a laboratory How many bacteria will then be present in the salad? enter your answer as a whole numbernot as an exponent

Answer 1

Answer:- The formula of calculating the number of bacterial cells after N number of generation is , ( 2^N × Initial number of cells).

Here, in this problem , the generation time is = 15 minutes , and total time kept in sunlight is 2 hours or 120 minutes. & Initially 3500 cells are present

So, total number of generations are = 120/15 = 8

Hence, N = 8

Total number of cells after 8 generations are = ( 2^8 × 3500) = 256×3500 = 896000

Hence , after 2 hours , 896000 bacteria will present in the salad.