A culture of a certain bacteria doubles every hour. At 9:00 am there’s we’re already 120 bacteria. Which equation represents the number of bacteria, n, at 8:00 am! How many bacteria were there?
Let's assume that the number of bacteria at 8:00 am is represented by n.
Since the bacteria culture doubles every hour, at 9:00 am (after 1 hour), there are 120 bacteria.
This means that at 8:00 am (after 2 hours), there would be half the number of bacteria compared to 9:00 am.
Therefore, the equation that represents the number of bacteria at 8:00 am is: n = 120/2
Simplifying this equation, we have: n = 60.
So, at 8:00 am, there were 60 bacteria.
To find the number of bacteria at 8:00 am, we need to determine how many hours have passed from 8:00 am to 9:00 am.
Since one hour has passed from 9:00 am to 8:00 am, we can represent the number of bacteria at 8:00 am with the equation:
n = 120 / 2
Simplifying this equation:
n = 60
Therefore, there were 60 bacteria at 8:00 am.
To find the number of bacteria at 8:00 am, we need to work backwards from the given information. Let's assume that at 9:00 am, there were 120 bacteria.
Since the bacteria double every hour, we can determine the number of bacteria at 8:00 am by dividing the number of bacteria at 9:00 am by 2, repeatedly for each hour that has passed.
To represent this mathematically, let's define n as the number of bacteria at 8:00 am. Then, the equation that represents the number of bacteria at 9:00 am would be:
n * 2^1 = 120
Here, 2^1 represents the doubling for one hour.
To find the number of bacteria at 8:00 am, we need to divide the original number (120 bacteria) by the doubling factor. Therefore, the equation representing the number of bacteria at 8:00 am would be:
n * 2^2 = 120
Here, 2^2 represents the doubling for two hours.
Simplifying the equation gives:
4n = 120
Now, we can solve this equation to find the value of n:
n = 120 / 4
n = 30
Therefore, there were 30 bacteria at 8:00 am.