An amoeba propagates by simple division; each split takes three minutes to complete. When such an amoeba is put into a glass container with a nutrient fluid, the container is full of amoebas in one hour.

How long would it take for the container to be filled if we start with not one amoeba, but two?

This is very simple, when you start out with only 1 amoeba, it takes 3 minutes to split into two. When you start with 2, it takes 3 minutes to split into 4. Since you are just subtracting the time it takes to split one into two, all you have to to is subtract 3 from 60 to get 57 minutes.

Posted by Amanda on 2002-10-08 09:36:33