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Some bacteria are growing in a dish. Every hour, each bacterium splits into 3 bacteria.
While walking along a beach, you notice a fish trapped in a small pool. You release the fish into the ocean, but before it swims away, it turns to reward you for your good deed.
It tells you, "Thank you for freeing me from that tide pool! I was getting claustrophobic. You can choose one of these purses as a reward. You cannot add money to the purses, and once you take any money out, the magic is broken and no more money will be added, but you may keep what is inside."
| time passed | 0 days | 1 day | 2 days |
7 days |
14 days (2 weeks) |
21 days (3 weeks) |
30 days (1 month) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purse A | \$1,000 | \$1,200 | \$1,400 | ||||
| Purse B | \$0.01 | \$0.02 | \$0.04 |
Complete the table for the amount of money in each purse for the given number of days after the fish offers the purses. Be prepared to explain your reasoning for each value.
Here are graphs showing how the amount of money in the purses changes. Remember Purse A starts with \$1,000 and grows by \$200 each day. Purse B starts with \$0.01 and doubles each day. Point P has the coordinates , and point Q has the coordinates .
When we repeatedly double a positive number, it eventually becomes very large. Let's start with 0.001. The table shows what happens when we begin to double.
| number of times doubled | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| number | 0.001 | 0.002 | 0.004 | 0.008 | 0.016 |
If we want to continue this process, it is convenient to use an exponent. For example, the last entry in the table, 0.016, is 0.001 doubled 4 times, or , which can be expressed as .
Even though we started with a very small number, 0.001, we don't have to double it that many times to reach a very large number. For example, if we double it 30 times, represented by , the result is greater than 1 million.
Throughout this unit, we will look at many situations in which quantities grow or decrease by applying the same factor repeatedly.