Pounding Headache
How much Tylenol can you safely take?
Students will
- Given acetaminophen’s half-life, calculate its hourly rate of elimination from the body
- Write an exponential rule for determining how much of the drug remains in a person’s body after a given time
- Use logarithms to determine the required time until a person’s body contains a given amount of the drug
- Describe how the amount of medication changes over time during a period of continued use
- Discuss some of the dangers of exceeding the recommended dosage guidelines
- Discuss what drug manufacturers should do to help prevent accidental acetaminophen overdoses
Before you begin
Students should be familiar with writing rules describing exponential decay. They will need to use logarithms to solve for variable exponents, and they should be able to apply basic rules of exponents and logarithms, for instance that (a)bc = (ab)c and log(ab) = b log(a).Common Core Standards
Content Standards
Mathematical Practices
Downloads
Shoutouts
Tylenol, This American Life
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