Pailin

Pailin Block D Jan. 14, '09 **FINDING THE GROWTH FACTOR & DECAY FACTOR** __Finding the growth factor__ For example, in problem 2.3 Growing Mold, this is one of the tables. Day || Mold Area (Cm2) || 0 (Start) || 1 || 1 || 3 || 2 ||  9 || 3 ||  27 || 4 ||  81 || In this table, you can see that the “Mold Area” does not increase by the same number each time, but it multiplies by the same number. Day one has three centimeters, and day two has six centimeters, 3 x 3 = 9. The mold area multiplies by 3 each day, so 3 is the growing factor. The way to find the growing factor is to take a number from **B** (Mold Area) and divide it by the previous number, then you will find out by how much it has increased after each ** A ** (Day). This is one way to find the growing factor in a problem; some problems ask you to find it from the graph, so you can make a table and solve this. Here is one more example: 2.3 Follow-Up Day || Mold Area (mm2) || O || 25 || 1 || 75 || 2 ||  225 || 3 ||  675 || 4 ||  2,025 || So, 225/75 = 3. And you can double check your work by doing another set of numbers. 675/225 = 3. So now you know that the growth factor is 3. __Finding the decay factor__ The decay factor is the same as growth, except instead of multiplying each time, the decay factor is the number of which it divides each time. For example here is a table from 4.1 Making Smaller Ballots Cuts || Area (in2) || 0 || 64 || 1 ||  32 || 2 ||  16 || 3 ||  8 || 4 ||  4 || 5 ||  2 || 6 ||  1 || 7 ||  .5 || 8 ||  .25 || 9 ||  .125 || 10 ||  .0625 || The decay factor in this table is 2, how I found this is I divided a number from B (Area) by the following number. For example: 64/32 = 2, or 32/16 = 2, so the decay factor is two. Here is another example of this: 4.2 Fighting Fleas Time Since Dose (hrs) || Active Medicine || 0 || 60 || 1 ||  48 || 2 ||  38.4 || 3 ||  30.72 || 4 ||  24.576 || 5 ||  19.6608 || 6 ||  15.72864 || So 60/48 = 1.25 Or, 30.72/24.576 = 1.25 So, the growth factor is 1.25