Drug Filtering Lab Assessment

Kaylor DeHaas
The Drug filtering lab assignment is a perfect example of how math formulas are
applied to real live solutions. The example is that a girl named Dot took a medicine
before a drug test that she is taking in a couple of days and wishes to know how
long it will take for it to filter out of her system so that she will be ready for the drug
test. The parameters are that about 25% is filtered out around every four hours.
The information you are given is that she started with about 1000mg in her blood
and after the first four hours went down to 750mg. The formula for 25% of the drug
being filtered out every four hours is that A=B(.75), A being the amount of the of
drug in her blood, B representing the current amount of drug in her system and .
75 being the amount of the drug that is left after the twenty five percent is taken
out. The .75 is what is remaining after the 25% has been taken out and put into a
decimal form, this helps the user of the formula see how much is in her blood after
every four hour interval. The formula can also be modified in order to see how
much is filtered out in a day (about 6.25% is taken out a day) then subtracting the
percent by 100% and converting it into decimal form. Now the user has a good idea
of how much of the medicine is filtered out.
Looking at the first graph shows a steady decline of the medicine in her system.
The amount is being filtered out around 25% at a time, starting at around 1000 mg
and then going down every four hours. There appears to be a vertical asymptote
which would make sense as the amount of the medication is decreasing and not
increasing. The graph helps show a more in depth look to how long it will take for
the medicine content in the blood stream to go down to zero. The graph can also
help show how much is going to be left after certain periods of time, for example
the amount of medicine left in Dots system after thirty days is going to be about
116MG, this can be reasoned from looking at the graph, also it can be deduced by
using the formula and calculating how much of the medicine if filtered every two
days, then after doing the formula with 87.5% left in her blood (this figured after
dividing the 25% by two and then subtracting it by 100%) you will be able to figure
out how much is filtered every two days, thus giving the user the ability to
accurately find the amount at this period of time.
After examining the graph and using the formula, it appears that the best time to
take the test when the drug has been filtered out of the system would be around
five to six days, however I would say that six days would be best as there still is at
least still enough for it the amount of the medication to be rounded to a whole
number. The reason why I am being cautious on this is that we were told to round
to the nearest mg, and if the blood test is able to detect the presence of this drug if
there is a t least 0.1 mg in the system, then six days is a more safe option as it
would be around 0.042 mg as compared to the five days being at 0.18 mg. The
drug itself will eventually be filtered out, however it will take a long while for it to

completely be filtered out as there will still be small trace amounts left inside of her,
and depending on how often she takes the medication, this could add to the trace
amounts left inside of her, which could throw off the information that is given as
there could be more than the initial 1000mg, however again depending on if she is
waiting long enough for the medication to filter through her system or when there is
only tiny trace amounts left then she should be fine. However if Dot is not following
the instructions and is taking more than she needs then she would not only fail her
drug test as there would be more in her system (providing if she did go in during the
estimated six days it would take for it to filter through her system) she may also
begin taking too much which would cause a buildup of all of the remnant mg of the
medication in her blood that she had inside of her which could cause a health risk.
The numbers that were calculated using the formula that we had seem to match
the exponential decay formula quite well, only leaving about one mg, off of almost
all of the estimates that were done with it. In order to use the formula, one needs
to be able to solve for K, however this is done by making it e^k4=0.75, then by
using a natural log on both sides and dividing the four, you are able to solve for k
which is a negative number of -0.0791920318. Then substitute it in for k making it
an equation of A(t)=A0e^(-0.071920518). A(t)= is the amount of drug in blood at
time in t hours, A0 is the initial amount of drug and k is the rate of decay. This
formula is a little bit more precise as it lets the user to be able to solve for time at
any amount of the drug in Dots body. In order for the model to be accurate like the
decay model is that it needs to be able to have time be part of the formula in order
to calculate it at exact time instead of just intervals of four hours. Also it is
important to have it to be able to have the exact amount that is in her blood if she
has already taken some of the medication and to calculate if any other medications
were taken during that time that might interfere with the other drug. Of course
these are just suggestions to make it a more realistic model.
In Conclusion this has shown me that math formulas are effective to help model real
life scenarios. They can be used to help solve any real world application. My
personal preference always agreed with this, however it can be hard to learn all of
the different math formulas to solve the problems. Math can be used so much and
is able to help us understand life on a greater scale, it is also key for science and
medicine. The real question is, is there anything math cant solve?