The doubling period of a bacterial population is 15 minutes...?

Question

The doubling period of a bacterial population is  minutes. At time  minutes, the bacterial population was 60000.



What was the initial population at time t = 0?

Find the size of the bacterial population after 5 hours

Answer 1

If you follow the formula y = a (b)^t

Where y is the total amount of bacteria, a is the initial bacterial at time 0, and b is the growth factor (which in your case is 2).

Your question says at t=120 minutes. This would be 15 minutes 8 times. So your time for t=8.

60000 = a (2)⁸

60000 = a (256)

60000/256 = a

234.375 = a (initial population)

Your equation is y = 234.375 (2)^t

After 5 hours (15 minutes 20 times), or at t = 20 you would get the

y = 234.375 (2)²⁰

= 245,760,000