18. The Drug Problem

Using ideas presented in Jim Sandefur’s article from the February 1992 Mathematics Teacher we model the amount of cough syrup in the body over time with water and food coloring. Next, students calculate the amounts of medicine in the body every four hours using an informal iterative process. From these ordered pairs of time and amount, we fit the data with an exponential function found using the exponential regression fit on the calculator. This function is then interpreted within the context of the amount of cough syrup in the body.

Technology: Measuring cups, food coloring and spoons, Graphing calculator.

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