Ellen is playing a video game in which she captures butterflies. There are 5 butterflies onscreen, but the number of butterflies doubles every minute. After 4 minutes, she was able to capture 6 of the butterflies.
Enter an expression for the number of butterflies after 4 minutes. Use a power of 2 in your answer.
An expression is
well, after m minutes, there are 5*2^m butterflies.
so, when m=4, ...
To find the number of butterflies after 4 minutes, we need to consider that the number of butterflies doubles every minute. If there were initially 5 butterflies onscreen, after 1 minute, there would be 5 * 2 = 10 butterflies.
Similarly, after 2 minutes, there would be 10 * 2 = 20 butterflies.
After 3 minutes, there would be 20 * 2 = 40 butterflies.
Finally, after 4 minutes, there would be 40 * 2 = 80 butterflies.
Therefore, the expression for the number of butterflies after 4 minutes is 5 * (2^4) = 5 * 16 = 80 butterflies.