A Scientist Placed Some Bacteria in a Sterile Dish of Agar

Multiple Choice

A scientist placed some bacteria in a sterile dish of agar. He counted the number of live bacteria at regular intervals afterward. He observed that at first the bacteria grew slowly at first, and then they increased very rapidly in number. Finally, the count leveled off and then declined rapidly as the food supply was used up. A graph of this relationship would be.

A) U-shaped
B) linear
C) monotonic
D) nonmonotonic