A population of bacteria growing in your shoe doubles every

A population of bacteria growing in your shoe doubles every 6 minutes. Assuming that you started with only one bacterium, how many bacteria could be present 90 minutes later?

Solution

Answer :

32768 bacteria

Explanation:

Rapidly dividing bacteria divides exponentially and their population increase follows the geometric progression. The time to be taken by bacteria to divide is referred to as generation time and it is useful for carrying out calculations for estimating the number of bacteria after a time length.

Generation time (G) for the given bacteria = 6 minutes

Let, n = number of generations the bacteria divides = 90/6 = 15

N_o = number of bacteria at the beginning = 1

N = number of bacteria at the end of the time interval

then, N = N_o x 2ⁿ

or N = 1 x 2¹⁵ = 32768 bacteria