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6.9E: Exercises for Section 6.10

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In exercises 1 - 2, answer True or False? If true, prove it. If false, find the true answer.

1) The doubling time for y=ect is ln2lnc.

2) If you invest $500, an annual rate of interest of 3% yields more money in the first year than a 2.5% continuous rate of interest.

Answer
True

3) If you leave a 100°C pot of tea at room temperature (25°C) and an identical pot in the refrigerator (5°C), with k=0.02, the tea in the refrigerator reaches a drinkable temperature (70°C) more than 5 minutes before the tea at room temperature.

4) If given a half-life of t years, the constant k for y=ekt is calculated by k=ln(12)t.

Answer
False; k=ln2t

In exercises 5 - 18, use y=y0ekt.

5) If a culture of bacteria doubles in 3 hours, how many hours does it take to multiply by 10?

6) If bacteria increase by a factor of 10 in 10 hours, how many hours does it take to increase by 100?

Answer
20 hours

7) How old is a skull that contains one-fifth as much radiocarbon as a modern skull? Note that the half-life of radiocarbon is 5730 years.

8) If a relic contains 90% as much radiocarbon as new material, can it have come from the time of Christ (approximately 2000 years ago)? Note that the half-life of radiocarbon is 5730 years.

Answer
No. The relic is approximately 871 years old.

9) The population of Cairo grew from 5 million to 10 million in 20 years. Use an exponential model to find when the population was 8 million.

10) The populations of New York and Los Angeles are growing at 1% and 1.4% a year, respectively. Starting from 8 million (New York) and 6 million (Los Angeles), when are the populations equal?

Answer
71.92 years

11) Suppose the value of $1 in Japanese yen decreases at 2% per year. Starting from $1=¥250, when will $1=¥1?

12) The effect of advertising decays exponentially. If 40% of the population remembers a new product after 3 days, how long will 20%remember it?

Answer
5 days 6 hours 27minutes

13) If y=1000 at t=3 and y=3000 at t=4, what was y0 at t=0?

14) If y=100 at t=4 and y=10 at t=8, when does y=1?

Answer
At t=12

15) If a bank offers annual interest of 7.5% or continuous interest of 7.25%, which has a better annual yield?

16) What continuous interest rate has the same yield as an annual rate of 9%?

Answer
8.618%

17) If you deposit $5000at 8% annual interest, how many years can you withdraw $500 (starting after the first year) without running out of money?

18) You are trying to save $50,000 in 20 years for college tuition for your child. If interest is a continuous 10%, how much do you need to invest initially?

Answer
$6766.76

19) You are cooling a turkey that was taken out of the oven with an internal temperature of 165°F. After 10 minutes of resting the turkey in a 70°F apartment, the temperature has reached 155°F. What is the temperature of the turkey 20 minutes after taking it out of the oven?

20) You are trying to thaw some vegetables that are at a temperature of 1°F. To thaw vegetables safely, you must put them in the refrigerator, which has an ambient temperature of 44°F. You check on your vegetables 2 hours after putting them in the refrigerator to find that they are now 12°F. Plot the resulting temperature curve and use it to determine when the vegetables reach 33°.

Answer
9hours 13minutes

21) You are an archeologist and are given a bone that is claimed to be from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. You know these dinosaurs lived during the Cretaceous Era (146 million years to 65 million years ago), and you find by radiocarbon dating that there is 0.000001% the amount of radiocarbon. Is this bone from the Cretaceous?

22) The spent fuel of a nuclear reactor contains plutonium-239, which has a half-life of 24,000 years. If 1 barrel containing 10 kg of plutonium-239 is sealed, how many years must pass until only 10 g of plutonium-239 is left?

Answer
239,179 years

For exercises 23 - 26, use the following table, which features the world population by decade.

Years since 1950 Population (millions)
0 2,556
10 3,039
20 3,706
30 4,453
40 5,279
50 6,083
60 6,849

Source: http:/www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0762181.html.

23) [T] The best-fit exponential curve to the data of the form P(t)=aebt is given by P(t)=2686e0.01604t. Use a graphing calculator to graph the data and the exponential curve together.

24) [T] Find and graph the derivative y of your equation. Where is it increasing and what is the meaning of this increase?

Answer
P(t)=43e0.01604t. The population is always increasing.

25) [T] Find and graph the second derivative of your equation. Where is it increasing and what is the meaning of this increase?

26) [T] Find the predicted date when the population reaches 10 billion. Using your previous answers about the first and second derivatives, explain why exponential growth is unsuccessful in predicting the future.

Answer
The population reaches 10 billion people in 2027.

For exercises 27 - 29, use the following table, which shows the population of San Francisco during the 19th century.

Years since 1850 Population (thousands)
0 21.00
10 56.80
20 149.5
30 234.0

Source: http:/www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hgpop.htm.

27) [T] The best-fit exponential curve to the data of the form P(t)=aebt is given by P(t)=35.26e0.06407t. Use a graphing calculator to graph the data and the exponential curve together.

28) [T] Find and graph the derivative y of your equation. Where is it increasing? What is the meaning of this increase? Is there a value where the increase is maximal?

Answer
P(t)=2.259e0.06407t. The population is always increasing.

29) [T] Find and graph the second derivative of your equation. Where is it increasing? What is the meaning of this increase?

Contributors

Gilbert Strang (MIT) and Edwin “Jed” Herman (Harvey Mudd) with many contributing authors. This content by OpenStax is licensed with a CC-BY-SA-NC 4.0 license. Download for free at http://cnx.org.


This page titled 6.9E: Exercises for Section 6.10 is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by OpenStax via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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