Chapter 10 - Worked Problems

Abstract

This chapter provides the exercises that have been used with honors students and that seem to be both interesting and challenging. In many cases, only the rudimentary coded solution is given. From this, one can build much more sophisticated code and in many cases create Module functions that can be used repeatedly with different parameter values. All of these separate problems were run as if the Kernel had to be restarted with each computation. Running sequentially without adding statements to clear variables will result in absurd output. As the colony grows, the substrate is consumed to supply the microbes with their building blocks. Some fraction of the substrate is necessarily diverted into the formation of biomass, that is, cells—their membranes and organelles—but some other fraction is used to produce the target molecule. In a batch process, when the substrate has been consumed, the microbial colony either dies rapidly, or if the process is to be stopped prior to complete substrate consumption, it is killed by a rapid change in conditions. From this point, the problem of recovering the target molecule is the one of separating it from the biomass and aqueous medium.