Organisms A and B start out with the same population size. Organism A's population doubles every day. After 6 days, the
population stops growing and a virus cuts it in half every day for 4
days.
Organism B's population grows at the same rate but is not infected
with the virus. After 10 days, how much larger is organism B's
population than organism A's population?

At the end of ten days, the size of population B is 256 times that of population A

Step-by-step explanation:

We work under the premise that population A and B start both with the same number of individuals. Let's call such initial population

Now, we write the exponential expression that describes population A as a function of days (t) for the first 6 days:

which represents the starting point with individuals on day zero, doubling after one day (t= 1), and keeping on doubling the following days for 6 days.

So at the end of 6 days, population A would have the following number of individuals:

That is 64 times the starting number of individuals.

After this, the population stops growing and starts reducing to one-half each day. This behavior can be represented by:

therefore after 4 days in this pattern, this culture has the following number of organisms:

which is now just four times what the culture started with.

Now, on the other hand, population B grows doubling each day without interruption, so at the end of 10 days its size is given by:

that is it has 1024 times the initial number of organisms.

So if we compare both populations at day 10:

Therefore, at the end of ten days, population B is 256 times the size of population A

c

Step-by-step explanation: