SOLUTION: For a biology lab you are looking at the growth of a bacterial colony. If your teacher started with 1 bacterium that grows at a rate of 4% every hour and by 2:15 pm when you have c

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Question 1146976: For a biology lab you are looking at the growth of a bacterial colony. If your teacher started with 1 bacterium that grows at a rate of 4% every hour and by 2:15 pm when you have class there are 1200 bacteria, what time did your teacher start the experiment?
Answer by greenestamps(13200) About Me  (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website!


The number of bacteria after t hours is

1%2A%281.04%29%5Et

Solve the equation

%281.04%29%5Et+=+1200

To find the number of hours it takes for the number to reach 1200. Then back up that many hours from 2:15pm to find when the experiment was started.

Note the number of hours is equivalent to several days -- so I suspect the numbers given in the problem are not correct....