Question

Joanne puts 40 bacteria in a petri dish. The population of bacteria is doubling every hour. Which function best represents the situation?

Answer 1

Key points:

In exponential growth, a population's per capita (per individual) growth rate stays the same regardless of population size, making the population grow faster and faster as it gets larger.
In nature, populations may grow exponentially for some period, but they will ultimately be limited by resource availability.
In logistic growth, a population's per capita growth rate gets smaller and smaller as population size approaches a maximum imposed by limited resources in the environment, known as the carrying capacity (
K
KK).
Exponential growth produces a J-shaped curve, while logistic growth produces an S-shaped curve.