Table of Contents

• Section 1. How the Vibrio population grows
• 1: What causes cholera?
• 2: Build the basic growth equation
• 3: Draw exponential growth
• Section 2. So why isn't Frank dead already?
• 4: How long until 1 million bacteria?
• 5: All we need now is data
• 6: Looking at data
• 7: Log transform straightens out exponential growth
• 8: Do ALL curves get "straightened" by taking the log?
• 9: Phases of bacterial growth
• Section 3. How can we tell when the population is growing exponentially?
• 10: A test for exponential growth
• 11: And the answer is...
• 12: To recap
• 13: Some more practice
• 14: Extended problem: Exponential growth ends
• Review
• 15: Summary

All we need now is some experimental data

We know that bacterial populations grow exponentially (N_t = N₀ 2ⁿ), and we know how many are likely to infect Matt (1 million), and we even know how many generations it will take to get to that number (about 20 generations) but what we don't know is... how fast are the generations? Or, put another way, what is the doubling time?

So, how fast do Vibrio populations double? Let's order up some data!