Math 1050

Drug Filtering Lab

Name:_Chelsea Bracken____

The purpose of this lab is to come up with a continuous model for exponential decay.
Dot assumes that her kidneys can filter out 25% of a drug in her blood every 4 hours. She knows
that she will need to take a drug test for an interview in a couple of days. She plans on taking one
1000-milligram dose of the drug to help manage her pain.
1.) Fill in the table showing the amount of the drug in your blood as a function of time and round
each value to the nearest milligram. The first two data points are already completed.

TIME SINCE
TAKING
THE DRUG (HR)
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
28
32
36
40
44
48
52
56
60
64
68
Write down the actual model for this data set:

A(t) =

AMOUNT OF
DRUG
IN HER BLOOD
(MG)
1000
750
563
422
317
238
179
134
101
76
57
43
32
24
18
14
11
8

2.) Use a graphing utility to make a plot of the above data. Label axes appropriately. Copy and
paste your graph into this document.

3.) Based on your graph, what can you say about the data? For example, is there a pattern? Is
there constant slope? Yes, there is a constant slope. Just as the data would suggest the
amount of pain killer depreciates at the same rate (25%) for each new value.

4.) How many milligrams of the drug are in Dots blood after 2 days?

Rounded to 32 mg
5.) How many milligrams of the drug are in Dots blood after 5 days?
Rounded to 0.20 mg
6.) How many milligrams of the drug are in Dots blood 30 hours after she took the drug? Explain
your reasoning. Rounded to 117 mg. Sense 30 hours is only two hours after the 28 hour mark
I took half of 25% = 12.5% of what was in her blood at 28 hours = 134 mg. I suppose I also
could have found the average of what was in her blood at 28 and 32 hours.

7.) A blood test is able to detect the presence of this drug if there is at least 0.1 mg in a persons
blood. How many days will it take before the test will come back negative? Explain your
answer. When rounding, it would take 6 days. Technically 5 days to get below the 0.1 mg
marker at 0.084 mg and at 6 days 0.036 mg.

8.) Will the drug ever be completely removed from her system? Explain your reasoning. What
complications might arise from having excess amounts in her system? Completely, no.
Technically, yes. Because of the asymptote decay the drug levels in her blood will continually
depreciate at the same percentage of 25% every 4 hours until it levels out to a smaller and
smaller percentage until the numbers converge upon zero. If Dot takes 1000 mg every day the
drug will compound upon itself and take a whole lot longer to get out of her system and down
below the 0.1 mg level.

9.) Since there is a constant rate of decay, a continuous exponential decay model can be used to
determine how much drug is in her system at any time.
Exponential Decay Model
A(t ) A0 e kt
Where A(t) is amount of drug in blood at time t in hours,
A0 is the initial amount of drug, and
k is the rate of decay (it will be a negative number)
You will have to find the actual value of k that works for this model. Write down the exponential
decay model for the amount of drug in Dots blood as a function of time:

]
Model: A(t) = 1000mg e^(-0.07192518)(t)

Now use that model to fill in the following table:

TIME SINCE
TAKING
THE DRUG (HR)
0
4
8
12
16
20
24
28
32
36
40
44
48
52
56
60
64
68

AMOUNT OF
DRUG
IN HER BLOOD
(MG)
1000
750
562
422
316
237
178
133
100
75
56
42
32
24
18
13
10
8

10.)
Interpret the parameters of this exponential model in terms of the context of the
problem. The drug levels are decreasing at a constant percentage towards a zero asymptote
as time continues.

11.)
Compare your values with the estimated values in the model. How close were they?
Why might they be different? They were very close and were the same or differed by a number
or two. The second set of values is more reliable because it does not rely on each new number
to come up with the next number.

12.)
Use a graphing utility to graph the original data along with a graph of the model on the
same set of axes. Copy and paste graph into this document.

13.)
Were you expecting a horizontal asymptote? What might that mean in the context of
the problem? Yes, I was expecting a horizontal asymptote. It would mean that this is a
continuous decay problem. Vertical asymptotes relate with growth charts.

14.)

Using your model, how much drug is in her system 17 hours after taking the drug?
294.42 mg

15.)
Using your model, how long will it take for exactly one-half of the drug to remain in her
system?
9.64 hrs.
16.)

Using this model, how long will it take for 0.1 mg of the drug to remain in her system?
128 hrs.

17.)
Do you think the continuous decay model is more accurate for predicting the amount of
drug in her blood? Why? Or why not?

Absolutely. Without the continuous decay model you have to rely on each new number
to provide you with the next number. If at any point you made a mistake it would mess
up any other following number if you werent using a continuous decay model. With the
continuous decay model you can input any information to get any answer you want.
You dont have to figure out unnecessary information in order to get the information that
you want.

18.)

What other factors should be considered in coming up with a more realistic model?
It should be considered that if Dot is taking a pain killer to manage pain that she is
probably taking the pretty frequently and it would be crucial to figure out the decay for

every time that she has taken the drug recently for you to figure out any real answer.
Also, I think it would be pretty important to figure out the bodys real ability to metabolize
and filter out the drug instead of assuming.

19.)
Reflective writing: Did this project change the way you think about how math can be
applied to the real world? Write one paragraph stating what ideas changed and why. If this
project did not change the way you think, write how this project gave further evidence to
support your existing opinion about applying math. Be specific.
Yeah, I think that this project gave me great evidence for the application of math. I took me
longer to figure question one that it took me to finish the rest of this project. I think that
practicality and time consumption is one obvious and beneficial factor. Beyond time
consumption, it would be completely impractical in terms of daunting and even a little absurd to
even try and figure out population growth of certain species or, people in certain countries over
long periods of time. There is also the factor of precision. Without a formula figuring out
population growth, or the decay of drugs, or the decay of radioactive material would prove
difficult to get an exactness to the whole process and could easily be swept off course by even
just one wrong number. Then there is the factor of excess information. In situations like these
you are usually trying to find the answer to one, or a few questions. When you have an
equation for the problem you can figure out exactly what you need to figure out without having
to compute excess information.