Gness Posted July 6, 2011 Share Posted July 6, 2011 (edited) there was alge placed in a lake at 12am the alge doubles every second the lake was full at 12:00pm. when was the lake half full? Edited July 6, 2011 by Gness Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
md65536 Posted July 23, 2011 Share Posted July 23, 2011 there was alge placed in a lake at 12am the alge doubles every second the lake was full at 12:00pm. when was the lake half full? If it doubled for 12*3600 seconds there would be 2^43200 algae, which is quite a bit more than the number of atoms in the universe. I'd say that though the lake was full at 12pm, it was probably also full a lot earlier than that. I'd say it was half full within the first minute (~10^18 "alge"). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cuthber Posted July 23, 2011 Share Posted July 23, 2011 Even if they didn't reproduce the algae would spread out and fill the lake by diffusion. An estimate of the time taken for that would depend on the size of the lake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MigL Posted July 30, 2011 Share Posted July 30, 2011 If it doubles every second, the lake was half-full one second before 12pm. Don't overanalyze !!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cuthber Posted July 31, 2011 Share Posted July 31, 2011 If it doubles every second, the lake was half-full one second before 12pm. Don't overanalyze !!! Do you really think we didn't know that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.C.MacSwell Posted July 31, 2011 Share Posted July 31, 2011 Do you really think we didn't know that? He didn't analyze it that far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MigL Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Yeah, I did. But I stopped short of smart-ass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cuthber Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Yeah, I did. But I stopped short of smart-ass. There's just no fun in that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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