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In the long run, exponential growth of any kind will overtake linear growth of any kind (that is the basis of the Malthusian catastrophe) as well as any polynomial growth, that is, for all α: = There is a whole hierarchy of conceivable growth rates that are slower than exponential and faster than linear (in the long run).
For example, with an annual growth rate of 4.8% the doubling time is 14.78 years, and a doubling time of 10 years corresponds to a growth rate between 7% and 7.5% (actually about 7.18%). When applied to the constant growth in consumption of a resource, the total amount consumed in one doubling period equals the total amount consumed in all ...
RGR is a concept relevant in cases where the increase in a state variable over time is proportional to the value of that state variable at the beginning of a time period. In terms of differential equations, if is the current size, and its growth rate, then relative growth rate is =. If the RGR is constant, i.e., =, a solution to this equation is
r = the population growth rate, which Ronald Fisher called the Malthusian parameter of population growth in The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, [2] and Alfred J. Lotka called the intrinsic rate of increase, [3] [4] t = time. The model can also be written in the form of a differential equation: =
Rutherford applied the principle of a radioactive element's half-life in studies of age determination of rocks by measuring the decay period of radium to lead-206. Half-life is constant over the lifetime of an exponentially decaying quantity, and it is a characteristic unit for the exponential decay equation. The accompanying table shows the ...
First order LTI systems are characterized by the differential equation + = where τ represents the exponential decay constant and V is a function of time t = (). The right-hand side is the forcing function f(t) describing an external driving function of time, which can be regarded as the system input, to which V(t) is the response, or system output.
A more intuitive characteristic of exponential decay for many people is the time required for the decaying quantity to fall to one half of its initial value. (If N(t) is discrete, then this is the median life-time rather than the mean life-time.) This time is called the half-life, and often denoted by the symbol t 1/2. The half-life can be ...
A large number of fundamental equations in physics involve first or second time derivatives of quantities. Many other fundamental quantities in science are time derivatives of one another: force is the time derivative of momentum; power is the time derivative of energy; electric current is the time derivative of electric charge; and so on.