A glass jar holds a single germ. After one minute, the germ splits into two germs. One minute after that, the two germs each split again, forming a total of four germs, continuing at this rate, a single germ can multiply to fill the whole jar in exactly one hour. Know this, how long in minutes, would it take to fill the jar if you had started with two germs?
Well, if one germ can fill the jar in one hour, 2 germs should do it in 1/2 that time, or 30 mins?
Sra
If it only take one germ a minute to split into two germs, then the two germs have a one minute head start — 59 minutes.
I hope this helps a little more. Thanks for asking.
To figure out how long it would take to fill the jar if you start with two germs, we can follow the same pattern as described in the given scenario.
Initially, we start with two germs. After one minute, each germ splits into two, resulting in a total of 4 germs. Then, one minute later, each of the 4 germs splits again, giving us a total of 8 germs.
We can see that in each one-minute interval, the number of germs doubles. This means that for every minute that passes, the number of germs is multiplied by 2.
If we continue this pattern, after 2 minutes, we would have 2 * 2 = 4 germs.
After 3 minutes, we would have 4 * 2 = 8 germs.
After 4 minutes, we would have 8 * 2 = 16 germs.
We can see that the number of germs is doubling every minute. So, if we started with 2 germs, it would take log base 2 of the desired number of germs to determine the time it would take to fill the jar.
Since the desired number of germs to fill the jar is when the jar is completely filled, which is 1 hour or 60 minutes, we need to find log base 2 of 60.
Using logarithms, log base 2 of 60 is approximately 5.906.
Therefore, if you start with two germs, it would take approximately 5.906 minutes to fill the jar.