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There is a practice question in my textbook, which reads the following:
"Starting with a fertilized egg (zygote), a series of five cell divisions would produce an early embryo with how many cells?"

The answer to this question is 32 cells, can somebody please exaplin why the answer is 32 cells?

2006-07-27 04:54:31 · 3 answers · asked by kizkat 2 in Science & Mathematics Biology

3 answers

Each time the number of cells doubles...

Start with 1 zygote:

1st division leads to 1x2 =2 cells

2nd division leads to 1x2x2 =4

etc...
5 divisions:
1 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 32 cells

2006-07-27 04:59:24 · answer #1 · answered by the last ninja 6 · 0 0

Basically, the formula is 2^n, n=the number of cell divisions

So 2^5 = 32 cells

2006-07-27 13:29:30 · answer #2 · answered by cristy7_pr 3 · 0 0

1 division - 2 cells
2 division - 4 cells
3 division - 8 cells
4 division - 16 cells
5 division - 32 cells

2006-07-27 12:01:55 · answer #3 · answered by tolle3 2 · 0 0

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