Question

A photograph of a bacteria enlarged 50,000 times attains a length of 5 cm. What is the actual length of the bacteria? If the photograph is enlarged 20,000 times only, what would be its enlarged length?

Answer 1

Let the actual length of bacteria be x cm and the enlarged length of bacteria be y cm, if the photograph is enlarged for 20,000 times.

The given information in the form of a table is as follows.

Length of bacteria (in cm)	5	x	y
Number of times photograph of Bacteria was enlarged	50000	1	20000

The number of times the photograph of bacteria was enlarged and the length of bacteria are in direct proportion.

Therefore, we obtain

Hence, the actual length of bacteria is 10⁻⁴ cm.

Let the length of bacteria when the photograph of bacteria is enlarged 20, 000 times be y.

Hence, the enlarged length of bacteria is 2 cm.
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