Question

Task 1 - Bacteria Population Growth

Bacteria are the most common example of exponential growth. In this task, you will choose an hourly growth rate between 2 and 10 for some bacteria.

You will start with 1 bacteria and then calculate the total population after certain amounts of time.

Question 1
Select a number between 2 and 10 to represent the hourly growth rate of a certain bacteria.

For example, selecting the number 8 would mean that the amount of bacteria will be 8 times greater after every hour

(1 point)
My bacteria will increase times every hour.
Question 2
Suppose you start with one single bacterium. Make a table of values showing the number of bacteria that will be present after each hour for the first six hours using the hourly growth rate that you selected. Then determine how many bacteria will be present once 24 hours have passed.(6 points)
hours population
0 1
1 88
2 6464
3 512512
4 40964096
5 32 comma 76832,768
6 262 comma 144262,144

Explain why this table represents exponential growth.(2 points)

Answer 1

[AI-generated answer — Bot GPT 3.5]

The table represents exponential growth because the population of bacteria is increasing at a constant rate proportional to the current population. Each hour, the population is multiplied by the selected hourly growth rate, resulting in a rapid increase of bacteria over time. As seen in the table, the population doubles or increases many times within each hour, leading to the exponential growth pattern.