Thread Subject:

half-life problem

After a dose, the concentration of medication in the blood declines due to metabolic processes. The half-life of a medication is the time required after an initial dosage for the concentration to be reduced by one-half. A common model for this process is:

C(t)=C(0)e^(-kt)

where C(0) is the initial concentration, t is time in hours, and k is called the elimination rate constant, which varies among individuals. For a particular bronchodilator, k has been estimated to be in the range 0.047 to 0.107 per hour. Find an expression for the half-life in terms of k, and obtain a plot of the half-life versus k for the indicated range.

Please help. I do not know what to do to solve this problem. Thanks for any help.

"Mo " <mfallah2@my.smccd.edu> wrote in message
news:ihr5in$r0c$1@fred.mathworks.com...
> After a dose, the concentration of medication in the blood declines due to
> metabolic processes. The half-life of a medication is the time required
> after an initial dosage for the concentration to be reduced by one-half. A
> common model for this process is:
>
> C(t)=C(0)e^(-kt)
>
> where C(0) is the initial concentration, t is time in hours, and k is
> called the elimination rate constant, which varies among individuals. For
> a particular bronchodilator, k has been estimated to be in the range 0.047
> to 0.107 per hour. Find an expression for the half-life in terms of k, and
> obtain a plot of the half-life versus k for the indicated range.
>
> Please help. I do not know what to do to solve this problem. Thanks for
> any help.

This sounds like a homework question and in general this newsgroup requires
people posting homework questions (or questions that sound like they're
homework, even if they're not) to show what they've done to try to solve the
problem and to ask a SPECIFIC question before the readers will offer any
suggestions. Post the code you've written to try to solve those questions
and indicate where EXACTLY you're stuck and someone may offer some
assistance.

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Steve Lord
slord@mathworks.com
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"Mo " <mfallah2@my.smccd.edu> wrote in message <ihr5in$r0c$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> After a dose, the concentration of medication in the blood declines due to metabolic processes. The half-life of a medication is the time required after an initial dosage for the concentration to be reduced by one-half. A common model for this process is:
>
> C(t)=C(0)e^(-kt)
>
> where C(0) is the initial concentration, t is time in hours, and k is called the elimination rate constant, which varies among individuals. For a particular bronchodilator, k has been estimated to be in the range 0.047 to 0.107 per hour. Find an expression for the half-life in terms of k, and obtain a plot of the half-life versus k for the indicated range.
>
> Please help. I do not know what to do to solve this problem. Thanks for any help.

Read your textbook again, then your math book, tell us how you would solve it if you didn't have MatLab, and what you have tried in MatLab to get started.