POW 1 Growth of Rat Population

500 Words2 Pages
Problem Statement Once upon a time two rats, one female and a male rat found there way on a ship and then they set sail across the ocean. On late December the two rats left the ship and made their home on the deserted island. The number of young produced in every litter is six, and three of those are females. The original female giver birth to six young on January 1 and produces another litter of six every 40 days thereafter as long as she lives. Each female born on the island will produce a new litter every 40 days after thereafter. The rats are on an island with no natural enemies and plenty of food, so no rats will die in the first year. Process There were many ways of how I organized my information. First I got a piece of paper and then I got a calendar. Then I counted every 40 days starting from January 1 and ending at December 26. Some other information that I gathered is that the total number of times a year that the original rats will give birth is 10 times. From this information I started to make a chart. There were many approaches that didn’t work out and were just a waste of time. One of the approaches that did not work out was me trying to write an equation and solving the problem algebraically. The assistance that I got was from my mother and she told me to do the POW the old fashion way. Evaluation I learned many things from this POW. One of the things I learned was how fast rats can reproduce offspring. I also learned that if rats have no natural predators the rat population would take over the whole island. There are many ways of how I could make this problem better. One of the ways is that instead of the POW making us do one year of the rat population we could do like two, three, and even four years. Another way to make this problem better is that if each female rat could produce four rats at a time instead of six rats at a time. There are

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