If an initial population of bacteria doubles every hour, what is the growth factor of this exponential model?

In this scenario, the growth factor is 2. This means that for every hour that passes, the bacteria population doubles, leading to a consistent multiplicative increase. You can think of it as if each bacterium is throwing a little party for its clones every hour! After each doubling, you can easily calculate the population for any given hour by using the formula \( P(t) = P_0 \times 2^t \), where \( P_0 \) is the initial population and \( t \) is the time in hours. If you start with 100 bacteria, after 3 hours, you’d have 800! Math can be fun, especially when it involves bacterial parties!