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-   -   Rearranging power equations (https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/showthread.php?t=499198)

  • Aug 17, 2010, 03:37 PM
    croan216
    rearranging power equations
    Trying to get the value of "t"

    1.015^t=4
  • Aug 17, 2010, 03:41 PM
    croan216

    I know that T equals 93 but I can't remember the method to get there.

    Cheers
  • Aug 17, 2010, 06:01 PM
    KISS

    93 to 0 decimal places.

    Take the log of both sides. Is that enough of a hint. Yea, I checked my answer.
  • Aug 17, 2010, 07:01 PM
    morgaine300

    This is how I remember to do this. Someone will probably have a hissy fit cause there's certainly nothing "proper" about it -- it's just something that works so I can remember it.

    If that were 1.015t = 4, without the exponent, you would divide both sides by 1.015 to solve for the t. So the left would cancel out to just t. And the right would be 4 divided by 1.015.

    However, it's not 1.015t, it's 1.015^t so you see that's not something you can really do. What it does do is remind you to divide the 4 by 1.015, except you're going to divide the log of 4 by the log of 1.015. I have to do this to remember which to divide by which.
  • Aug 17, 2010, 07:25 PM
    KISS

    Taking the log of both sides it becomes t * log(1.015)=log(4) which is easy to solve for t.

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