Question

A bacteria population doubles every 12 hours if there are 1000 bacteria at the start how many bacteria will there be after 3 days (in scientific notation)?

Answer 1

So, we know that:

Every 12 hours, the population doubles.

We start with 1000 bacteria.

We want to find the number of bacteria after 72 hours (3 days).

72 / 12 = 6, so we know the population doubles 6 times.

So set up a formula:

It doubles six times, so we must do 2^6 * 1000 = P

P = 64,000 bacteria, or 6.4 x 10^4 in scientific notation.