DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

APPLICATIONS TO FIRST ORDER LINEAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

1. The population of a country is growing at a rate proportional to its population. If the growth rate per year
is 4% of the current population, how long will it take for the population to double (in years)?

2. At a yearly rate of 5% compounded continuously, how long does it take (to the nearest year) for an
investment to triple?

3. One important method of dating fossil remains is to determine what portion of the carbon content of a
fossil is the radioactive isotope carbon-14. During life, any organism exchanges carbon with its
environment. Upon death this circulation ceases, and the 14C in the organism then decays at a rate
proportional to the amount present. The proportionality factor is 0.012% per year. When did an animal
die, if an archaeologist determines that only 25% of the original amount of 14C is still present in its
fossil remains?

4. Use the fact that the world population was 2560 million in 1950 and 3040 million in 1960 to model the
population of the world in the second half of the 20th century. (Assume that the growth rate is
proportional to the population size.) What is the relative growth rate k? Use the model to estimate the
world population in 1993 and to predict the population in the year 2020.

5. The population of a town at a rate proportional to the population size at any time. Its initial population of
1000 increases by 10% in 5 years. What will be the population after 50 years?

6. Initially there were 100 milligrams (mg.) of a radioactive substance present after 6 hours the mass
decreased by 3%. If the rate of decay is proportional to the amount remaining after 24 hours. Determine
the half-life of radioactive substance.

7. A bottle of soda at room temperature 72°F is placed in a refrigerator where the temperature is 44°F.
After half an hour the soda has cooled to 61°F. What is the temperature of the soda after another half
hour? How long does it take for the soda to cool to 50°F?

8. A small metal bar, whose initial temperature was 20°C, is dropped into large container of boiling water.
How long will it take the bar to reach 90°C if it is known that its temperature increase 2°C per second?
How will it take the bar to reach 98°C?

9. When a chicken is removed from an oven, its temperature is measured at 300°F. Three minutes later its
temperature is 200°F. How long will it take for the chicken to cool off to a room temperature of 70°F?

10. After a free-falling sky diver of mass m reaches a constant velocity v1, his parachute opens, and the
resulting air resistance force has strength kv. Derive an equation for the speed of the sky diver at t
seconds after the parachute opens.

11. An object of mass m is dropped from a hovering helicopter. Find its velocity as a function of time t,
assuming that the air resistance is proportional to the velocity of the object.
1|Page
 DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
12. A racquetball is hit straight upward with an initial velocity of 2 m/s. The mass of a racquetball is
approximately 0.0427 kg. Air resistance acts on the ball with a force numerically equal to 0.5v, where v
represents the velocity of the ball at time t.

13. The weight of a penny is 2.5 grams, and the upper observation deck of the Empire State Building is 369
meters above the street. Since the penny is a small and relatively smooth object, air resistance acting on
the penny is actually quite small. We assume the air resistance is numerically equal to 0.0025v.
Furthermore, the penny is dropped with no initial velocity imparted to it. What is the terminal velocity
of the penny?

14. A 600 gallon brine tank is to be cleared by piping in pure water at 1 gal/min, and allowing the well-
stirred solution to flow out at the rate of 2 gal/min. If the tank initially contains 1500 pounds of salt, a)
how much salt is left in the tank after 1 hour? b) after 9 hours and 59 min?

15. A tank contains 100 liters of brine with 60 kg of salt in solution. Brine containing 1.0 kg per liter of salt
flows into the tank at the rate of 2 liters per minute and the mixture is kept uniform by stirring, flows out
at the rate of 3 liters per minute. Find the amount of salt in the tank at the end of one hour (in kg).

16. A tank contains 1000 liters of brine with 15 kg of dissolved salt. Pure water enters the tank at a rate of
10 liters/min. The solution is kept thoroughly mixed and drains from the tank at the same rate. How
much salt is in the tank after 20 minutes (in kg)?

17. Into a 2000-liter container is placed 1000 liters of a brine solution containing 40 kg of salt. A brine
solution containing 0.02 kg/liter of salt flows into the container at a rate of 50 liters/min. The solution is
kept thoroughly mixed, and the mixture flows out at a rate of 25 liters/min. How much salt is in the
container at the moment it overflows?

18. The radius of the moon is roughly 1080 miles. The acceleration of gravity at the surface of the moon is
about 0.165g, where g is the acceleration of gravity at the surface of the earth. Determine the velocity of
escape for the moon (in miles/sec). (Hint: g = 32.16 ft/sec2 and 1 mile = 5280 ft)

19. To leave the moon, the Apollo astronauts had to take off in the lunar module, and reach the escape
velocity of the moon. The radius of the moon is 1.74x106 m, and the mass of the moon is 7.35x1022 kg.
What velocity did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in the lunar module have to reach to leave the moon
(km/s)?

20. CE Board November 2017. A right circular container 2.5 m in diameter is 3 meter tall. A 50 mm hole
is provided at the bottom of the container to drain the water when necessary. If it 2/3 full of water how
long, in minutes, does it take to empty the container from the instant the hole is opened? Coefficient of
discharge C = 1.0. Use the same equation in our google slides lecture notes.

21. Suppose that in winter the daytime temperature in a certain office building is maintained at 70°F. The
heating is shut off at 10 P.M. and turned on again at 6 A.M. On a certain day the temperature inside the
building at 2 A.M. was found to be 65°F. The outside temperature was 50°F at 10 P.M. and had dropped
to 40°F by 6 A.M. What was the temperature inside the building when the heat was turned on at 6 A.M.?

2|Page
 DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
22. The biologist G. F. Gause studied the growth of the protozoan Paramecium in the early 1930s. Through
his data, he figured out that the relative growth rate is 0.7944 when y ( 0 ) = 2 and the carrying capacity is
64. This leads to the logistic model
dy  y 
= 0.7944 y 1 −  , y ( 0 ) = 2
dt  64 
where time is measured in days.
(a) Solve the differential equation for y in terms of t
(b) How long will it take for the protozoa to reach 30?
(c) Sketch the graph of the solution to this equation.

23. The time of death of a murdered person can be determined with the help of modeling through
differential equation. A police personnel discovers the body of a dead person presumably murdered and
the problem is to estimate the time of death. The body is located in a room that is kept at a constant 70°
F. For some time after the death, the body will radiate heat into the cooler room, causing the body’s
temperature to decrease assuming that the victim’s temperature was normal 98.6°F at the time of death.
Forensic expert will try to estimate this time from body’s current temperature and calculating how long
it would have had to lose heat to reach this point. Let the officer arrived at 10.40 p.m. and the body
temperature was 94.4°F. Let the officer makes another measurement of the temperature say after 90
minutes, that is, at 12.10 a.m. and temperature was 89 degrees.

24. A tank in the form of a right-circular cylinder standing on end is leaking water through a circular hole in
its bottom. Let us assume that the height of the tank is 10 ft. high and has radius 2 ft. and circular hole
has radius ½ inches. If the tank is initially full, how long it will take to empty?

25. Suppose that your parents have established a money market account with a balance of $50,000 that they
will use to help you pay for your college education. The account receives an average annual interest of
4%. You estimate that your tuition, room and board, and other college expenses to be $20,000 per year.

26. A manager in a communications company contributes $2400 per year into her retirement fund by
making many small deposits throughout the year. The fund grows at a rate of 3.5% per year
compounded continuously. After 35 years, she retires and begins and begins withdrawing from the
retirement fund at a rate of $3500 per month. If she does not make any deposits after she retires, how
long will her retirement fund last? [Hint: Divide the problem into two smaller problems—one that deals
with the situation before retirement and one that deals with the problem after retirement.]

27. A population of rabbits in a meadow is observed to be 200 rabbits at time t = 0. After a month, the rabbit
population is observed to have increased by 4. Using an initial population of 200 and a growth rate of
0.04, with a carrying capacity of 750 rabbits,
(a) Write the logistic differential equation and initial condition for this model.; (b)Draw a slope field for
this logistic differential equation and sketch the solution corresponding to an initial population of
200 rabbits.; (c) Use the solution to predict the population after 1 year.

3|Page