In a resource-limited ecological system, a population of organisms cannot keep growing forever (such as lab bacteria growing inside culture tube). The effective growth rate g (including
contributions from births and deaths) depends on the instantaneous abundance of resource R(t), which in this problem we will consider the simple case of linear-dependency:
dtdN=g(R)N=αRN
where N(t) is the population size at time t. The resources is consumed at a constant rate β by each organism:
dtdR=−βN
Initially, the total amount of resources is R0 and the population size is N0. Given that α=10−9 resourceunit −1s−1,β=1 resource-unit/s, R0=106 resource-units and N0=1 cell, find the total time it takes from the beginning to when all resources are depleted (in hours).
Given constants:
- Proton mass, mp=1.67⋅10−27kg
- Neutron mass, mn=1.67⋅10−27kg
- Electron mass, me=9.11⋅10−31kg
- Avogadro's constant, N0=6.02⋅1023mol−1
- Universal gas constant, R=8.31J/(mol⋅K)
- Boltzmann's constant, kB=1.38⋅10−23J/K
- Electron charge magnitude, e=1.60⋅10−19C
- 1 electron volt, 1eV=1.60⋅10−19J
- Speed of light, c=3.00⋅108m/s
- Universal Gravitational constant,
G=6.67⋅10−11(N⋅m2)/kg2
- Solar Mass
M⊙=1.988⋅1030kg
- Acceleration due to gravity, g=9.8m/s2
- 1 unified atomic mass unit,
1u=1.66⋅10−27kg=931MeV/c2
- Planck's constant,
h=6.63⋅10−34J⋅s=4.41⋅10−15eV⋅s
- Permittivity of free space,
ϵ0=8.85⋅10−12C2/(N⋅m2)
- Coulomb's law constant,
k=4πϵ01=8.99⋅109(N⋅m2)/C2
- Permeability of free space,
μ0=4π⋅10−7T⋅m/A
- Magnetic constant,
4πμ0=1⋅10−7(T⋅m)/A
- 1 atmospheric pressure,
1atm=1.01⋅105N/m2=1.01⋅105Pa
- Wien's displacement constant, b=2.9. 10−3m⋅K
- Stefan-Boltzmann constant,
σ=5.67⋅10−8W/m2/K4