A common inhabitant of human intestines is the bacterium Escherichia coli. A cell of this bacterium in a nutrient-broth medium divides into two cells every 20 minutes. The initial population of a culture is 63 cells.

Find the rate of growth after 8 hours. (Round your answer to three decimal places.) ... ?

This is an example of exponential growth, determined an equation of the form P=Po*e^ (kt), where Po is the initial value, P the value at time t.

You can find the value of k, the relative growth rate, by substituting in the above equation. All the other questions are a matter of arithmetic.

Just plug-in the given values and you can now solve this problem yourself!