Answer:
It will take about 35.439 years to triple.
Step-by-step explanation:
Recall the formula for continuously compounded interest:
where "A" is the total (accrued or future) accumulated value, "r" is the rate (in our case 0.031 which is the decimal form of 3.1%), "P" is the principal, and "t" is the time in years (our unknown).
Notice also that even that the final amount we want to get is three times $48,000. So our formula becomes:
Now,in order to solve for "t" (which is in the exponent, we use logarithms: