If your bacteria reproduce every 20 minutes how many bacteria would you have at the end of four hours assuming that you begin with one bacterium?

Answer 1

The generation time of the bacteria in question is 20 min One hour is 60 min Therefore, the number of divisions in one hour is 60/20 = 3 divisions Therefore let n = 3 To find the number of bacteria that result at the end of three divisions, find the value of 2n 2n = 23 = 8 Therefore, there is an eight-fold increase in the number of bacteria at the end of one hour. This means if you start off with X number of bacteria, there will be 8X bacteria at the end of the hour (all other conditions remaining unchanged)

Answer 2

If bacteria reproduce every 20 minutes, this means they double in number every 20 minutes. After 4 hours (which is 240 minutes), there would be 12 reproduction cycles (240 minutes divided by 20 minutes). Starting with 1 bacterium, after 12 cycles, you would have 2^12 bacteria, which equals 4096 bacteria at the end of four hours.

Answer 3

Oh, dude, you're hitting me with some math now? Okay, so if your bacteria are partying and multiplying every 20 minutes, after four hours you'd have... wait for it... a whopping 4096 bacteria! Yeah, that's right, from just one little bacterium. It's like a tiny microbial rave in there.

Answer 4

It would be 4096. Bacteria generally reproduce by binary fission - a process in which division gives rise to two identical cells. If it divides every 20 min, then after 4 hrs or (12 x 20 min), no. of cells would be 2^12 or 4096.

Answer 5

That will depend on what type of bacteria are present, what substance they are growing on, what the temperature is, what the climate is, what lighting conditions are, and how large the original colony was.

Answer 6

Hey there!

According to your question, I am gonna consider that you have given me literally one bacterial cell (aka bacterium) and want to know how much you will get after 4 hours when it replicates every 20 minutes.

Before explaining further, I want to say that all cells divide logarithmically and I will show you what I mean by that.

STARTING

Hour '0' (zero)= 1 bacterium

Replication Begins

1st Hour

20th minute= 2 cells

40th minuter= 4 cells

60th minute= 8 cells

2nd Hour

20th minute= 16 cells

40th minute= 32 cells

60th minute= 64 cells

3rd Hour

20th minute= 128 cells

40th minute= 256 cells

60th minute= 512 cells

4th Hour

20th minute= 1024 cells

40th minute= 2048 cells

60th minute= 4096 cells

End of Replication

As you can see, you will get 4096 bacterial cells at the end of 4 hours due to logarithmic replication.

One more thing! My sibling said that the above method is called brute-force method, but there is a bit faster, and mathematical way to that. You will see that the numbers above are multiples of 2. So, the base is 2 but you keep changing its exponent from 0 (2^0= 1), 1, 2, 3 till 2^12, which will give 4096!

I hope my answer is correct and hopefully, you found this useful! 😄👍

Answer 7

You would have 16,777,216 bacteria at the end of four hours if they reproduce every 20 minutes, starting with one bacterium. This is calculated by taking the number of times they reproduce in four hours (240 minutes) and raising 2 to the power of that number.

Answer 8

Start with 1 Bacteria, 1/2 hour later bacteria splits, now have 2 bacteria. 1/2 hour both bacteria split and you now have 4 bacteria.

4.

Answer 9

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