Algebra-1

1. Determine the number of doubling periods:

Since the bacteria population doubles every hour and we want to know the number of bacteria after 4 hours, the number of doubling periods  is equal to the number of hours passed, which is .

 

2. Use the exponential growth formula:

The formula for exponential growth in this case is , where:

 is the final population of bacteria.

 is the initial population of bacteria. Here, .

 is the number of doubling periods, which is .

 

3. Substitute the values into the formula:

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