Question

If an average person produces 2 million red blood cells per second, how many red blood cells will be produced in a 24 hour period? express the value in both standard and scientific notation.

Answer 1

Given: If an average person produces 2 million red blood cells per second

To find:  The number of red blood cells produced in a 24 hour period

Logic: Use unitary method of proportion to find the answer

Solution:

In 1 second, the number RBC produced is = 2,000,000 (2 millions)

An hour has 60 minutes and 1 minute has 60 seconds. So 1 hour will have,

1 hour = 60 x 60 seconds = 3600 seconds

Therefore, the number of seconds in 24 hours = 24 x 3600 seconds.

Now using the unitary method of proportion,

1 second produces = 2,000,000 RBCs

24 x 3600 seconds produces $= \frac{24 \times 3600 \times 2000000}{1}$

That is 24 hours will have 172,800,000,000 RBCs or 172.8 billions RBCs (standard notation).

The answer in scientific notation will be $1.728 \times 10^1^1$ RBCs.