Reviewing the tropical sea-grass growth experiment in the unit, the total growth was calculated by subtracting the starting length from the end length. What type of function was used to calculate total growth?
A. linear
B. trigonometric
C. quadratic
D. cube root
C. quadratic
In a quadratic function, the equation takes the form of y = ax^2 + bx + c, where x represents the independent variable (in this case, the length of the sea grass) and y represents the dependent variable (in this case, the total growth). In the experiment, the total growth was calculated by subtracting the starting length from the end length, which is consistent with a quadratic function where the total growth is determined by the square of the change in length.