12 - What is Exponential Growth & Decay? (Half Life & Doubling Time) - Part 1 - Free Educational videos for Students in K-12 | Lumos Learning

12 - What is Exponential Growth & Decay? (Half Life & Doubling Time) - Part 1 - Free Educational videos for Students in k-12


12 - What is Exponential Growth & Decay? (Half Life & Doubling Time) - Part 1 - By Math and Science



Transcript
00:00 Hello . Welcome back . The title of this lesson
00:02 is called exponential growth and decay . Also called half
00:06 life . Could also titled this lesson . Exponential doubling
00:11 time formula and exponential half life decay formula . I'm
00:14 excited to teach this because everybody's probably heard of the
00:17 concept of the half life of a radioactive element .
00:20 The half life of uranium is whatever whatever years .
00:23 Uh and so we have kind of in our consciousness
00:26 sort of that that is something to do with decay
00:29 . But probably you didn't really know until now that
00:31 it's an exponential decay . Just like the types of
00:33 problems that we've been doing before dealing with money .
00:36 Now it turns out that the exact same equations that
00:40 govern the growth of money and the decay and the
00:42 value . Remember the depreciation of assets ? We talked
00:46 about that in the last couple of lessons those were
00:48 exponential equations . It was exponential growth compounding interest formula
00:53 . It turns out that the exact same equation governs
00:56 other things in nature . Other things in nature ,
00:58 notably for instance , population growth of bacteria . For
01:02 instance when you put bacteria in addition let them grow
01:05 , they are going to exponentially the population's gonna exponentially
01:09 grow . It does not grow in a line ,
01:10 the population of bacteria or virus or something grows exponentially
01:15 right . Also populations in the world do not grow
01:19 like populations of people , they do not grow linearly
01:21 , they grow exponentially also the decay of elements into
01:25 other elements does not decay in a line down the
01:28 decay in an exponential fashion down . So what I
01:31 want to do is at the beginning of the lesson
01:33 , tell you and show you what these exponential growth
01:36 and decay uh equations are in terms of population growth
01:41 and also decay radioactive decay . And then what we
01:44 want to do after I show you what the equations
01:46 are , we're going to back up the truck a
01:47 little bit and we're gonna start from that compounding interest
01:50 formula which you already understand and know and I'm gonna
01:53 show you how these half life decay formulas and how
01:56 this doubling time formula comes about from it . And
01:59 then we're gonna solve some problems that deal with population
02:02 growth and radioactive decay . That's all just in the
02:05 back of your mind . Just keep in mind that
02:07 it's all exponential growth and decay . Okay . So
02:11 I don't expect you to understand this yet . I
02:13 am not gonna go into great detail but I want
02:15 to show you what these equations are and we're gonna
02:17 derive these equations so you'll know exactly where they do
02:19 come from . So we have something called the doubling
02:21 time exponential growth formula . And here's what it is
02:25 . This equation is the exponential equation that governs the
02:28 population growth of bacteria in a Petri dish or even
02:32 population growth of people in a city or in a
02:35 nation or something like that . And you can see
02:37 that the number two is in here is the base
02:39 of the exponent . That's why it's called the doubling
02:41 time exponential growth formula . It's an exponential formula because
02:45 the uh the exponent the time variable is up in
02:49 the exponent there . And what you have here is
02:51 you have an initial population , you have a final
02:54 population and then you have these variables here which I
02:58 want to talk about a little bit later . But
02:59 basically D . Is the doubling time for instance you
03:02 might know that in a dish of bacteria you might
03:05 know instead of talking about it growing at 3% per
03:08 year . Like we talk about money we generally in
03:11 population growth we don't talk about how many percent per
03:13 year . We generally say the population doubles in four
03:17 hours or the population of this bacteria doubles in six
03:20 hours . Okay , so this D . Is what
03:23 we call the population doubling time . So if we
03:25 know that the bacteria is doubling every six hours then
03:28 D . Is going to be six for six hours
03:30 . And then we can project in the future however
03:32 many hours we want in the future what the population
03:35 will be . If we know the initial population ,
03:37 we know what the doubling time is and we know
03:40 how far in the future we want to look .
03:42 Okay now I'm gonna show you that this equation comes
03:44 directly from the exponential equations that we've already learned .
03:48 That comes from compounding interest . It's the same exact
03:50 equation is just written in a different way here .
03:52 But when we talk about population growth we talk about
03:54 doubling time . Right ? Same thing with half life
03:57 radioactive decay . You've probably heard of uranium decays and
04:01 so many thousands of years or so many millions of
04:03 years . The half life is so many thousands of
04:05 years or whatever it is . Notice that this equation
04:07 in this equation are exactly the same equation . We
04:10 have an initial population . In this case for radioactive
04:13 decay , we talk about the final amount of atoms
04:16 in the initial amount of atoms , whereas in populations
04:19 we talk about the final population and the initial population
04:21 . But the math is exactly the same . Instead
04:24 of a doubling , we have a half . Because
04:27 this is not a growth of the population , it's
04:29 the decay of the amount of atoms into some other
04:32 atoms . So what we have is in one half
04:34 here and here instead of A . D . We
04:37 have an H . The H . Is not the
04:39 doubling time . Because the uranium is not getting more
04:42 and more , it's having itself , it's going less
04:44 less . So if we know that the uranium ,
04:47 I'm just making this up that half of it decays
04:49 in 1000 years , we would say that has a
04:52 half 1000 year half life . So this would be
04:54 the number that you put in here , 1000 years
04:57 will be the half life . So if we know
04:59 how much uranium we start with and we know how
05:02 long it takes for half of a sample to decay
05:05 . And we know how far in the future .
05:06 We want to take a look like how many thousands
05:08 of years down the road . Then this is an
05:10 exponential equation that will tell us how many uranium atoms
05:13 we have left or how many grams of uranium will
05:15 have left . So for the population growth up here
05:17 it's an exponential growth curve . And for the population
05:21 decay here it's an exponential decay . So growth and
05:24 decay , it's exactly the same equation really . It's
05:27 just that in here we have a one half ,
05:29 that's what's making it go down down down every year
05:32 . And here we have a number , which is
05:33 the number two , which is making it go up
05:35 up up . So what I want to do is
05:37 just keep these in the back of your mind ,
05:39 keep in mind that they are exactly the same equation
05:41 . Just one makes it go up and one makes
05:43 it go down and now we want to talk about
05:45 where do they come from ? We could solve problems
05:46 with these right now , you know , you wouldn't
05:48 know really where they come from , You certainly wouldn't
05:50 know that they come directly from what you already know
05:53 . So I want to back up the truck a
05:54 little bit , cover these guys up and let's start
05:58 from what we know and let's figure out that these
06:01 equations for half life and doubling time . Formula exponential
06:04 doubling time for populations come from exactly what we know
06:08 . So we know that the growth of money is
06:16 something that we'll look at in the last three lessons
06:19 we have extensively covered what this is and this is
06:22 the following equation . The amount of money I have
06:25 in the future is equal to the principal times one
06:28 plus some annual rate divided by the number of compounding
06:31 periods raised to the power of MT . This equation
06:35 should be familiar to you if it's not familiar to
06:37 you , it just means that you haven't looked at
06:39 any of my lessons and exponential growth of money .
06:42 So you need to go back to that part .
06:43 All this stuff builds on each other . So this
06:46 is , it governs how much money I have in
06:48 the future . When I start with a certain amount
06:50 of money and I have a certain interest rate and
06:51 I'm compounding so many times per year in times per
06:54 year . It turns out that this exact same equation
06:58 that governs how how money grows in a bank account
07:01 in terms of an interest rate . When you get
07:03 so many percent interest per year . This equation also
07:07 governs population growth . This exact equation that governs how
07:10 money grows in a bank also grows . How many
07:13 bacteria is going to be in a Petri dish ?
07:15 Because it's all exponential growth , it's all exponential growth
07:20 . So uh in order to kind of make some
07:23 progress here and connect the dots from here to the
07:25 equations , I just showed you over there . Um
07:28 I'm gonna ask you to just take a simple example
07:31 with me . Let's take an example . Okay ,
07:33 let's say the population growth Rate instead of money ,
07:40 we're gonna talk about population growth rate , annual growth
07:43 rate of the population . Let's say it's 1 4
07:47 per year . This means that if I have a
07:52 Petri dish of some kind of bacteria or virus and
07:55 I look on year number one and I know how
07:57 many how many uh bacteria I have in their account
08:01 them let's say . And then I look one year
08:03 later I'm gonna have 1.4% additional bacteria in that dish
08:09 the next year . And then the third year after
08:11 that we'll have 1.4% of Of your number two .
08:15 And so that's why it grows exactly the same way
08:17 that money grows . But let's say that the growth
08:19 rate is 1.4% per year . Okay so if we
08:23 put it into this equation the one that we know
08:26 we're gonna change the variables a little bit instead of
08:28 the amount of money . And the principal we're gonna
08:30 change these letters a little bit . We're going to
08:32 have the final amount of bacteria that we have is
08:35 going to be equal to some initial amount . These
08:37 are exactly replacements for these variables right here . And
08:41 then what we're gonna have is one plus this over
08:43 this and all that stuff . But what's gonna end
08:45 up happening is it's gonna be 1014 to the power
08:49 of teeth . Why does it equal this ? Well
08:52 because it's an annual growth rate per year that means
08:54 it's it's uh you can think of it as compounding
08:57 once per year . So n is one . So
08:59 you have one plus this is the rate 11.4% means
09:03 remove the decimal two spots . So 20.14 here we
09:08 add to one we get 1.14 one time per year
09:11 and is one . So this is what the equation
09:13 comes out to be . So this is the initial
09:18 number I'm going to talk about instead of bacteria .
09:20 I'm going to talk about the number of people population
09:24 , initial number of people . This is the final
09:29 number people . This is the time in years .
09:36 So so far you should be totally with me .
09:38 As long as you know what this formula is from
09:40 previous lessons . This is the equation that governs the
09:43 growth of money with an initial amount of money ,
09:45 a final amount of amount of money and interest rate
09:47 and compounding so many times per year . In this
09:50 case we're just growing uh 1.4% per year . So
09:54 this equation comes out to this and we just relabel
09:56 these variables in terms of populations . So when you
09:59 see in as a variable , it means the number
10:01 of something , number of bacteria , number of people
10:05 later on when we do half life , it will
10:06 be a number of atoms . That's the same thing
10:08 . It's the amount of something instead of the amount
10:10 of money we use in to be the number of
10:14 people or whatever it is . Alright now , I'm
10:17 gonna do a big note here . Note this is
10:20 something that's not obvious , but it's important for us
10:22 to do this , to connect the dots from this
10:24 to those equations over there . A 1.4% growth rate
10:30 . Annual growth rate means that this population doubles approximately
10:38 doubles every 50 years . This is not something you
10:45 would know by looking at this , this is something
10:47 I'm telling you , and I'm gonna show you why
10:49 it's the case . You can think of population growth
10:51 in two ways and that's what we're basically gonna do
10:53 . You can think of it as growing 1.4% per
10:56 year in this example , or you can think of
10:59 it as the population just doubles every 50 years .
11:01 When we talk about money , we usually talk more
11:04 about how much growth you're getting every year in terms
11:06 of percent per year . But when we talk about
11:08 populations , either it's bacteria or people populations or if
11:12 it's the number of atoms , we don't talk usually
11:14 about the number of percentage per year . We talk
11:17 about the doubling time . Or how long does it
11:21 take for the population to double ? It turns out
11:23 that these are just two different ways of expressing the
11:25 exact same thing . And now I need to to
11:28 connect those dots to show you that that's the case
11:30 . 1.4% growth rate is approximately doubling every 50 years
11:34 . How do I know that ? Because put right
11:38 here , because of the following thing . If I
11:42 put this into this formula right here , this is
11:44 the growth rate formula for a population , right ?
11:47 If I put it in here , then uh over
11:50 here in not times 1.014 to the power of 50
11:57 is approximately equal to two And not . So if
12:01 I start , if I wanted to figure out how
12:03 many people I ended up with 50 years in the
12:06 road , what would I do if I wanted to
12:08 know how many people I have in the population 50
12:10 years later ? What would I do ? I would
12:11 put how many people I started with this is the
12:13 growth rate for this example and I would put 50
12:15 years in here . That's all I've done here .
12:17 How many people I start with what the growth rate
12:19 is to the power of 50 . That's what I'm
12:21 going to have 50 years from now . But what
12:23 I'm telling you is if you put this exponent in
12:25 your calculator , what you're going to find out that
12:28 1.014 , go ahead and grab a calculator to the
12:32 power of 50 is approximately equal to two . Okay
12:37 , that's why these are equivalent because in not is
12:40 the same on both sides . The population doubles because
12:43 1.01 for this particular interest rate or growth rate ,
12:47 When you put an expanded into 50 years , it
12:49 just so happens that it comes out to be about
12:51 two . That is why for this particular it's not
12:54 something you would just no , it's just I'm telling
12:56 you that for a annual growth rate of 1.4% ,
12:59 it turns out that that's about 50 years . Because
13:02 when you take that rate and raise it to the
13:04 power of 50 you get about two . Okay ,
13:07 now why am I doing all this stuff ? So
13:09 you got to work with me a little bit here
13:10 ? So let's go just a little bit farther .
13:12 Let's change this around and say this is basically an
13:15 equation here . So Even though these this is not
13:19 exact , I'm gonna go and put an equal sign
13:20 here and make it an equation , even though it's
13:21 not quite exact , it's 2.00 something and I'm going
13:25 to take and Saul I'm gonna move this exponent to
13:27 the other side by doing the following thing . 1.014
13:33 is equal to the two to the power of 1/50
13:36 . You'll see why I'm doing this in just a
13:38 second , make sure you understand this . If I
13:39 take this and raise it to the power of 1/50
13:42 then the exponents cancel . So that's why they're gone
13:45 and if I do it to the left I can
13:46 do it to the right and raise this to the
13:48 one over 50th power . So now you should agree
13:50 with me that the number one point oh 14 is
13:53 equal to the number two to the power of one
13:56 over 50th . It comes directly from from all of
13:59 the exponent here , grab a calculator , take ,
14:01 take this fraction , raise two to the power of
14:02 that and you're gonna find out that it equals one
14:04 point Close , very close to equal 1.14 . Okay
14:10 , now finally I'm ready to show you a little
14:12 bit of the punch line here . Okay , So
14:15 there is two equivalent ways to think about population growth
14:26 . There's probably more than two , but there's two
14:28 that we're gonna talk about in this lesson . The
14:30 first way is the way that we talked about a
14:32 long time ago . How much does the population grow
14:34 in percentage every year ? You could say that this
14:37 population is in is equal to some initial population Times
14:43 1.014 to the power of thi this equation , in
14:46 words you would say that the population grows 1.4% per
14:54 year . That's one way to think about it .
14:55 But like I said we don't usually talk about this
14:58 is how we look at it if it was money
15:00 right ? But it's not money and so it's something
15:03 else or we can think of it in terms of
15:06 doubling time we can say that n . Is equal
15:10 to and not notice it's 1.1 point oh one forward
15:16 to the power T . What would I put in
15:17 here ? 1.14 we just said was equal to two
15:21 to the power of 1/50 raised to the power of
15:24 T . All I did was I said this number
15:26 I just saw for what it is . I'm going
15:27 to stick it in there . So this means that
15:31 in is equal to in not and then multiplied by
15:38 two to the power of multiply the exponents . Because
15:40 it's an experiment raised to an exponent . It's T
15:43 to the T . Over to I'm sorry to to
15:46 the power of T over 50 . Right , so
15:49 this is the other way to look at it .
15:51 So this is one way to look at in terms
15:53 of a population growth rate . This is another way
15:55 to look at it and this way to look at
15:57 it in words is that the population doubles every 50
16:07 days . I'm showing you buy a concrete example with
16:12 numbers that the equation that governs money , which is
16:15 exactly where this comes from and has exactly the same
16:18 form as a percent growth of money every year .
16:21 You can think of a population growing X percent per
16:23 year or you can convert that into a doubling .
16:27 What we call a doubling time formula . This is
16:29 the formula that we're learning in this lesson . This
16:31 is the equation that I showed you at the beginning
16:33 , I said it was the doubling time exponential growth
16:36 formula . The final amount of people that you have
16:39 is equal to the initial amount of people times two
16:41 to the power of this exponent I'm gonna talk to
16:43 you about in a second . What this really means
16:48 is that what you're really doing here is the exponent
16:51 is basically telling you The exponent here in the bottom
16:56 , this is the doubling time , 50 years is
16:58 when the population doubles when I put a value of
17:02 time in here . This whole exponent when you put
17:05 a value of time in there , is telling you
17:07 how many doubling periods you have . And it's better
17:09 to really show you what a chart . So let
17:12 me go over here . We have a problem here
17:13 that we're gonna work in just a second , but
17:14 I'm gonna go and use the bottom half of this
17:16 board to continue my thought process over here . So
17:19 we're gonna have something like n . Is equal to
17:21 end , not Multiply by 2 to the T over
17:24 50 . This experiment is telling you how many doubling
17:27 periods I have . Okay , let's say I look
17:30 50 years in the future , I'm gonna put 50
17:32 and for T50 over 50 is one , that's only
17:35 one doubling period . So I'll take the population started
17:38 with and multiplied by two because then the exponent will
17:40 be 11 doubling period . If I then instead looked
17:44 100 years in the future then t would be 101
17:47 100 divided by 50 is two . Which means I
17:49 have to doubling periods . I would multiply by 22
17:53 times for two doubling periods . So this exponent with
17:55 the fraction gets a lot very confusing for a lot
17:58 of students . All it's doing is it's it's forcing
18:00 you to tell me are forcing me to tell you
18:03 how many doubling periods I have Here every doubling periods
18:07 50 years when I put the time in and do
18:09 the division it's how many doubling periods . And I
18:10 actually calculating down the road , that's what I'm going
18:13 to use for my xbox . So for instance if
18:16 I'm going to do a little chart which I am
18:18 I would say this is the time in years and
18:23 then this is the population . Okay , so in
18:27 zero years , Let's go way on out like here
18:30 at zero years , what's going to happen ? I
18:32 put zero in for T2 to the zero is one
18:36 , and then one times and not , I'm going
18:37 to have an initial population and they're not . That's
18:39 what it means to start at zero . Okay ,
18:42 But what if I look 50 years in the down
18:45 the road ? 50 years , Okay , then what's
18:47 gonna happen is gonna be 50/50 , which is one
18:50 . So the population then is going to be in
18:53 not times two to the first power . So I've
18:57 doubled it . And that makes sense because we said
18:59 the doubling time was 50 years . So in 50
19:01 years I'm doubling my initial population . Now , let's
19:04 go down there and say we're looking 100 years on
19:06 the road down the road . So that's gonna be
19:08 100 over 50 . That's too . And so your
19:10 population is going to be in not times two squared
19:13 , which means uh In Not Times two . And
19:16 then again times too , so it doubled again .
19:18 Okay , and we can play this game again ,
19:20 will go down one more 150 years . Then it
19:24 would be in not times two to the three power
19:28 , because 1 50 divided by 50 gives me three
19:30 , it's three doubling period . So this is one
19:32 doubling period to doubling period . Three doubling period .
19:35 I hope you can see that this is an exponential
19:37 formula , exactly in the same way that this is
19:40 an exponential formula . The exponents appear in the in
19:42 the the variable is up here in the exponent same
19:45 thing here . The variable is up here in the
19:47 experiment . It's just 22 different ways of saying exactly
19:50 the same thing . If you want to talk about
19:52 the population growing X percent per year , you would
19:54 use something like this . But if you want to
19:56 talk about the population doubling every however many years you
20:00 would use something like this . It yields the exact
20:03 same curve . The equation is like a little bit
20:05 different , but they yield exactly the same curve .
20:08 So we can generalize this instead of talking about 1.4%
20:11 per year and talking about 50 year doubling time ,
20:14 we can generalize it to what we call the doubling
20:17 time . Exponential growth formula . We have an initial
20:20 population , we have a final population , it's doubling
20:23 every D . Years . This is the doubling time
20:25 . Now I'm using years but the doubling time might
20:28 be given to you in hours . If the doubling
20:30 time was 10 hours then you would put a 10
20:33 here . But then the time that you put up
20:35 here also should be expressed in hours . So when
20:37 you do like let's say the doubling time was 10
20:40 hours . But you were gonna look 20 hours in
20:43 the future then how many doubling periods would you have
20:45 ? 20 divided by 10 ? You'd have to doubling
20:48 periods . So this division in the expo is just
20:51 telling you how many doubling periods I have . And
20:53 then of course you do the multiplication here And double
20:57 that many number of times . And that's how the
21:00 growth is going to happen . So in population growth
21:02 of bacteria or population growth of people or population growth
21:05 of of things like that , we don't usually talk
21:08 about 5% per year growth . We say the doubling
21:11 time of this colony is 15 hours . So then
21:14 you will put 15 hours here . The two is
21:16 there . You have an initial population . And then
21:20 if you want to know how much you have down
21:21 the road , you have to stick how many hours
21:23 or how many days or whatever it is down the
21:25 road that you're looking and you're going to get the
21:27 exact same exponential growth curve that you get . When
21:31 we talked about money , it's exactly the same thing
21:33 . And I tried to show you that it's exactly
21:35 the same thing by starting from The growth of money
21:39 equation . This is what the population growth is in
21:42 terms of percent per year coming from this equation .
21:44 And then we just take an example , 1.4% is
21:47 50 years , showing you that when you put it
21:49 in there , the percentage can be expressed in terms
21:52 of a doubling time , essentially a doubling with a
21:55 base of two like this . And when you stick
21:57 it back in there , you can you can get
21:59 from this equation directly to this equation which means they're
22:01 the same thing which equation you use Just depends on
22:05 the problem that you have . Okay now the next
22:08 thing I want to talk about is half life .
22:10 Now we've discussed it a little bit already , we'll
22:13 solve our problems in just a second . Notice the
22:16 half life equation is exactly the same equation as this
22:19 one . The only difference is you have a one
22:21 half here instead of a two here and instead of
22:24 tea over D . We call it T over H
22:25 . H . Means half life . So when you
22:28 if you know that a sample cuts in half the
22:31 number of atoms or its population , if it cuts
22:34 in half every 10 days let's say then H .
22:38 Is equal to 10 . And this is the same
22:40 same sort of thing . So if you have a
22:42 10 day half life and you look 10 days in
22:45 the future , that's one half life period , then
22:48 that means this is exported as one . And then
22:50 you're just multiplying the population by one half because after
22:53 one half life period you should be at half the
22:56 population and and so on and so forth . The
22:58 exponent that you put here . This division is telling
23:01 you how many half life periods you're looking in the
23:03 future and then you're just multiplying by one half that
23:06 many times . Okay , so I think it's pretty
23:10 good idea to take a look at the half life
23:13 in a tiny , tiny bit more detail . Just
23:15 like we did a chart here for this , let's
23:17 say um let me actually get myself just a tiny
23:21 bit more room . Let's close this off . Like
23:24 this . Let's just say that for an example that
23:28 uh half life , yeah , this Of some radioactive
23:34 isotope or something like that is 1600 years . That
23:39 means that in 1600 years , half of that sample
23:43 uranium or whatever it is , it's going to transmute
23:46 and turn into some other atom . It's gonna decay
23:48 and on average half of it will decay in 1600
23:51 years . That's what that means . Okay , so
23:53 then if you were going to look at this in
23:55 equation form , looking at the radioactive decay , what
23:58 that would mean is that N . Is equal to
24:00 end ? Not times one half T over 1600 .
24:05 That's what happens . You put the half life into
24:08 the H location and then this is the equation that
24:10 would govern . Okay , what would this look like
24:13 if we then took a look out over time ?
24:16 Just like we did for this one . When we
24:18 had one doubling period , we doubled uh The population
24:22 . We had to doubling periods 100 years out .
24:24 We w we multiplied by essentially by four because we
24:27 doubled it twice . How is it going to look
24:29 here ? Yeah . So let's do the same kind
24:32 of thing . So we'll do time in years .
24:37 Okay ? And then we'll have amount of atoms left
24:42 . Okay ? And we'll go ahead and draw a
24:44 line all the way across like this . All right
24:46 . So what happens at time zero ? This means
24:48 no time has elapsed at all . If we put
24:50 a time of zero in here , it's zero over
24:52 1600 so it's 01 half to the zero power is
24:55 one . And then times this means we still have
24:58 all of our sample left . We start out within
25:00 not and in zero years we have exactly what we
25:03 expect to have . Okay , Now let's take this
25:06 thing out . Since we have a half life of
25:08 1600 years . Let's see what happens after 1600 years
25:11 . Elapse If we put 1600 and the exponent and
25:14 divide by this , we're gonna get one , which
25:16 means one half to the one power . So that
25:19 means we're taking in multiplying in not just times one
25:22 half , which means we're going to cut the whatever
25:24 we started within half , which is exactly what a
25:26 half life is . We said half of it should
25:29 be around after 1600 years . And that's exactly what
25:31 we get from our equation . Now let's go out
25:35 to to half life periods 3200 years . If we
25:38 put 3200 years divide by the 16 we're gonna get
25:41 to . And then what we're going to get is
25:44 the exponent will be two . So to be in
25:46 not times one half square . So what that means
25:50 is we'll take the initial after 3200 years , we
25:52 will have the initial amount of atoms times one half
25:56 , but then times one half again . So it
25:58 cut itself in half , two times the first time
26:01 it cut himself in half was after 1600 years .
26:03 But then after another 16 years , that cut himself
26:06 in half again , that means That it's really 1/4
26:10 of the initial population , one half times one half
26:13 is 1/4 . And that's what ends up happening here
26:15 and we'll go out one more time here . What
26:18 about 4800 ? If I put 4800 here , you're
26:21 gonna get three . And so it's gonna be in
26:23 not times one half cube . So you take the
26:28 initial population times one half times one half times one
26:31 half . That's how much you're gonna have after three
26:33 half dive periods or left . So if you want
26:35 to look at a concrete example , let's say That
26:40 the initial amount of the stuff we had was 10
26:43 g That was and not then after 1600 years we
26:47 cut this in half and we're gonna have five g
26:50 . And then after 3200 years , if you take
26:53 10 times one half times one half again , you're
26:56 going to get 2.5 g . Notice you have it
26:59 here and then we have it again here . And
27:02 then over here you're going to get 1.25 g because
27:06 we have it again here . So one half times
27:09 one half times one half times the initial gives us
27:11 to 1.25 g here . And then of course we
27:14 could take this out and say what about two years
27:17 later it's going to be exactly what the equation is
27:20 here . It's going to be in not times one
27:22 half T over 1600 whenever the time is . So
27:28 here the numbers I picked where nice multiples here .
27:31 So I could calculate easy , but you can put
27:33 any time you want into there , Anywhere in between
27:37 1600 and zero , you can put any number you
27:39 want and it's going to predict exactly how much of
27:40 the sample that you have for exponential growth of money
27:43 . The curve goes up like that for exponential decay
27:46 , it goes down like that . So I think
27:49 at this point we need to solve a couple of
27:51 problems . Ultimately , this is the equation that you're
27:55 going to use for half life decay . And this
27:57 is the equation you're going to use when the population
28:00 growth is given to you in terms of doubling time
28:03 . If you're ever given a problem where you're given
28:06 that the population growth is however many percent per year
28:09 then you're going to use the regular compounding growth formula
28:13 that we have . All right . So let's go
28:17 ahead and do our first problem . A bacteria population
28:22 size and not That's the size the initial size of
28:25 the population . It doubles every 12 hours by How
28:28 much does it grow in two days . It's kind
28:32 of a vague problem because it doesn't tell you how
28:34 much you started with or how much you're trying to
28:37 end up with . It's just telling you that however
28:39 much you start with doubles after this much time .
28:43 So you're given not a percentage , you're given the
28:46 doubling time . So you know , you're gonna have
28:47 to use the doubling time formula . So the very
28:49 first thing you want to do is write that equation
28:51 . Now the number of bacteria that we have in
28:56 the future is going to be equal to the initial
28:58 amount of bacteria that we have times two to the
29:01 power of T over the doubling time by now you
29:04 should be reading this exponent to be telling you how
29:07 many doubling periods do we have ? That's what it's
29:10 telling you . And that's the exponent we're gonna use
29:12 on the two . Okay so I have first .
29:16 The very first thing you have to do is you
29:18 have to realize that you're given days in the problem
29:21 for one of the times and the doubling time was
29:23 given in a different unit called hours . You have
29:26 to make sure that the times that you're using in
29:28 these equations have the same units always . So we're
29:31 gonna take two days and just say that's equal to
29:33 48 hours . So I have the same unit here
29:35 . This is the doubling time um equation here .
29:38 And so now I have to start putting things in
29:40 place . I'm trying to say that the number of
29:44 bacteria in the future is going to be equal to
29:47 whatever it is . I start with Multiplied by two
29:51 and then I'm looking how many hours down the road
29:54 , 48 hours And the doubling time is 12 hours
29:59 . So what does this mean ? It means the
30:00 doubling time is 12 hours . But I'm actually looking
30:02 four times that down the road . So what happens
30:06 is this is two to the fourth power . This
30:08 exponent , the only purpose of it is to tell
30:10 me how many doubling periods I have . The problem
30:13 tells me the population doubles every 12 hours . And
30:16 when you do the exponent math , the division ,
30:18 it tells me how many doubling periods do I have
30:20 ? Four doubling periods . So what happens is What
30:25 this means is that the final population here in is
30:29 going to be equal to two to the fourth power
30:31 , which is 16 times the initial population . Okay
30:35 , so you can write this in words however you
30:38 want . The problem says the bacteria population doubles every
30:41 12 hours by how much does it grow in two
30:43 days . All you can say the population is 16
30:48 times larger In two days or after two days .
30:59 This is where a lot of students get confused because
31:01 I never gave you what the initial population was .
31:03 And so they don't really know what to do .
31:04 I'm just trying to figure out how much bigger it
31:06 is . So if you don't know what the initial
31:08 population is , leave it in there until and just
31:11 tell me how much bigger it is . You see
31:13 how little math is here . It's just telling me
31:16 How uh long it takes the population to double the
31:20 exponent calculates how many doubling periods I have in this
31:22 case . four . So that tells me the population
31:25 is now 16 times larger . It's gonna be the
31:29 similar sort of deal for the half life uh types
31:32 of problems . And this problem , it says the
31:35 half life of carbon 14 is 5730 years . How
31:39 much of a 10 mg sample will we have after
31:43 4500 years elapse . Okay , now , first of
31:48 all , before you do any math , what do
31:49 you think is gonna happen ? It's telling me that
31:51 the half life of this carbon 14 is 5730 years
31:55 . That means that however much carbon I start with
31:57 , I expect to have about half of it after
32:00 5730 years . But in this problem , I'm only
32:03 going out 4500 years in the future . I'm not
32:06 even going one half life period down the road .
32:09 So I expect to not quite have decayed , I'm
32:12 going to decay . I'm just not going to get
32:13 all the way to the halfway point . I'm not
32:15 gonna have half of my sample left , I'm gonna
32:17 have a little more than half left because I didn't
32:19 even decay one half life period . Now , that's
32:22 in words , what happens ? How did we do
32:25 it in terms of math ? What we say ,
32:27 is that the final amount of material that we have
32:30 is equal to the initial amount of material that we
32:31 have times one half raised to the power of T
32:35 over H . Where H . Is whatever the half
32:37 life is . The having time is another way to
32:40 write that . So then you just fill in the
32:43 material . You know that the initial amount of the
32:45 sample is 10 right ? It is 10 if you
32:48 want to And then one half its cutting itself in
32:51 half every how often ? Every 5730 years . However
32:55 , I'm only going 4500 years in the future .
32:58 That's T and it's 5730 years in the future .
33:03 Years is the same unit as years . So I'm
33:05 okay using these numbers . But notice what this fraction
33:08 is gonna be whenever you do this division , it's
33:10 going to be 10 times one half when you do
33:13 4500 divided by 57 30 you're gonna get 0.78 53
33:20 . Which means the exponent here means it's not even
33:22 one , which means I didn't even get to one
33:25 having period , I didn't even get to one half
33:27 life . So what you do is in your calculator
33:30 , take one half to the power of this and
33:32 then multiply by 10 , you're gonna get 10 times
33:36 0.58 oh two . Notice that this is now not
33:40 cut in half , it's a little bit more than
33:42 half . And so what you're gonna get is 5.8
33:45 oh two mg , 5.8 oh two mg . Which
33:48 is a little bit more than half of my 10
33:51 . The reason it's a little bit more than half
33:52 is because I didn't quite get to 5700 years .
33:55 If I would have taken exactly the 50 730 years
33:58 , the exponent would be a one and then it
34:00 would be multiplying by half and then I would have
34:01 exactly five . Okay , so this exponential decay of
34:08 half life period , It's interesting to look at a
34:10 little chart , we talked about exponential growth a lot
34:14 . Let's just do a little graph here . It's
34:16 not gonna be for this particular problem , but in
34:18 general for the half life decay , you have time
34:21 here , Then the initial sample has some in not
34:25 some initial in this case it was 10 mg ,
34:27 but we're going to leave it and not , that's
34:29 the initial amount of atoms that I have . What's
34:31 gonna happen is also which colour ? This thing is
34:35 gonna exponentially decay down . Like this never gonna quite
34:39 get to zero , but it's gonna exponentially decay down
34:41 . And then when it gets to about half this
34:44 is in not over to right here , this is
34:49 one half life period . Remember h is the amount
34:53 of years it takes for half of the sample to
34:55 decay . So eight years in the future is when
34:57 this thing has decayed to about half of what its
35:00 value is here . If I were to go another
35:02 having period down here , I'm not gonna drop but
35:05 if I go another H period here then it will
35:08 cut it in half again and again and again and
35:10 again . That's what's going on . Every time you
35:11 go h years in the future it cuts the previous
35:15 value in half and half and half . Ok so
35:18 it's a lot of material . We've learned not one
35:21 equation , we've learned two equations . We've learned that
35:24 we can express exponential growth in terms of doubling time
35:27 . And we've also learned that we can express it
35:29 in terms of half life decay . The equations are
35:33 exactly the same thing really . You have the initial
35:35 population in the final population , you have the time
35:38 in years or hours or whatever . And then you
35:40 have the the the the having time which we call
35:43 half life , you have the doubling time which we
35:45 call doubling time . And I hope that you understand
35:48 by taking a look at these charts that these equations
35:51 , even though they look different , they are exactly
35:53 the same as the original compounding interest equation that we
35:56 have . This is one way to look at the
35:58 situation . This is another way to look at exactly
36:01 the same growth . Notice everything on the left here
36:03 with the end , in the end , it is
36:04 exactly the same , this and this are exactly the
36:07 same curve . It's just you have to have the
36:09 doubling time given to you in the problem . If
36:11 you're going to express it like that , so if
36:13 you're given doubling time , use the doubling time formula
36:15 . If you're given half life , use the half
36:17 life formula . Otherwise , just know that they are
36:19 exactly the same curves of exponential growth and decay that
36:22 we've studied in the past .
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