A scientist placed some bacteria in a sterile dish of agar. He counted the number of live bacteria at regular intervals afterward. He observed that at first the bacteria grew slowly at first, and then they increased very rapidly in number. Finally, the count leveled off and then declined rapidly as the food supply was used up. A graph of this relationship would be.
A) U-shaped
B) linear
C) monotonic
D) nonmonotonic

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The description of the bacteria growth pattern indicates a nonmonotonic relationship, where the number of bacteria first increases slowly, then rapidly, levels off, and finally decreases. This means the graph does not consistently move in one direction (either always increasing or always decreasing), which is characteristic of a nonmonotonic graph.

A Scientist Placed Some Bacteria in a Sterile Dish of Agar