A culture of the bacteria E. coli is grown in a petri dish. The initial sample had 5 E. coli bacteria when the experiment began. E. coli is a bacteria that grows very quickly, doubling its population every 15 minutes under ideal conditions. The experiment is left to run overnight for 8 hours and then for the rest of the day (24 hours total).
a. Express the population of E. coli, , as an exponential function of the time elapsed since the experiment began.
b. What was the total amount of E. coli after 8 hours?
c. After 24 hours, the amount of E. coli was estimated by mass to be . Is that what was expected from our exponential growth model?

Question

A culture of the bacteria E. coli is grown in a petri dish. The initial sample had 5 E. coli bacteria when the experiment began. E. coli is a bacteria that grows very quickly, doubling its population every 15 minutes under ideal conditions. The experiment is left to run overnight for 8 hours and then for the rest of the day (24 hours total).
a. Express the population of E. coli, , as an exponential function of the time elapsed since the experiment began.
b. What was the total amount of E. coli after 8 hours?
c. After 24 hours, the amount of E. coli was estimated by mass to be . Is that what was expected from our exponential growth model?

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