Puzzler

How Does My Garden Grow?

Question

You planted sunflower seeds in your back garden. They grew and started to bloom. Every day, the number of flowers doubled.

It took 52 days for the flowers to fill the garden. How many days did it take for them to fill half the garden?

Answer

This classic mathematics problem deals with exponential growth. Doubling is a type of exponential growth. The change rate is proportional to the current value. If the number of sunflowers doubles each day and fills the garden in 52 days, it would have filled half the garden the previous day. So, the number of days it would take to fill half the garden is 51 days.