A cell divides into two identical copies every 4 minutes. How many cells will exist after 5 hours?

Convert 5 hours to minutes first, and then divide by 4, and multiply by two.

Katy, not quite so simple.

there are 300 minutes in 5 hours, so there would be 300/4 or 75 splits

4 min -- 2 cells = 2^1 - 1st split
8 min -- 4 cells = 2^2 - 2nd split
12 min -- 8 cells = 2^3 - 3rd split
16 min -- 16 cells = 2^4 -4th split
20 min -- 32 cells = 2^5 - 5th split
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60 min -- 32768 cells = 2^15 - 15th split
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300 min = 3.7779 x 10^22 = 2^75 - 75th split

It has been estimated that there are approximately 6.33 x 10^22 grains of sand on this earth, you have quite some prolific cells there.

http://visindavefur.hi.is/svar.asp?id=4803

To find the number of cells that will exist after 5 hours, we need to determine how many times the cell divides in that time period.

First, let's convert 5 hours into minutes. There are 60 minutes in an hour, so 5 hours is equal to 5 x 60 = 300 minutes.

Since the cell divides into two identical copies every 4 minutes, we can divide the total number of minutes (300) by the time it takes for one division (4 minutes) to find the number of divisions that will occur in 5 hours:

300 minutes รท 4 minutes/division = 75 divisions

Now, we know that each division results in the creation of two cells. Therefore, we can multiply the number of divisions (75) by 2 to find the total number of cells that will exist after 5 hours:

75 divisions x 2 cells/division = 150 cells

So, after 5 hours, there will be 150 cells that exist.