The function that describes the situation where a car purchased for 30,000 dollars decreases in value by 20% each year is exponential.
Here's why:
1.Exponential Function: The value of the car decreases by a constant percentage (20%) each year. This type of change is characteristic of exponential decay, where the quantity decreases by a fixed rate each period, leading to a multiplicative decrease.
The general form of an exponential decay function is:
where:
a is the initial amount (in this case, 30,000),
b is the decay factor (for a 20% decrease, (b = 1 - 0.20 = 0.80)),
x is the number of years.
So the function describing the car's value over time is: