While loop word problem

I have the following word problem and am struggling to determine the arguments for the while loop. Any information is helpful!

Write a while loop that outputs the answer to the following question: Sally prepares two plates of 10 cells each. One plate has normal cells, and the other contains cells with a mutation believed to reduce the normal hourly reproduction rate by half. If the number of normal cells triples every hour, how many of each type of cell should be in the plates after 12 hours? Name the outputs total_normal and total_mutant.

[Sindar]

show us what you've got so far

[Emily Stadnicki]

This is what I have so far!

>> normal = 10;
>> mutant = 10;
>> h = [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12];
>> normal_total = h*(3*normal);
>> mutant_total = h*(1.5*mutant);
>> while mutant_total <= normal_total
if h = 12

Answer 1

[Jon]

You will need to add the details but you probably want to do something like this

% set some parameters
runHours = 12; % number of hours to run test for
normalRate = 3; 
mutantRate = normalRate/2;

% initialize
hours = 0;
normal_total = 10;
mutant_total = 10;

% loop to let cells grow 
while hours <= runHours % run until the final number of hours is reached
    hours = hours + 1; % count up the hours
    % compute new populations
    normal_total = normal_total*normalRate;
    mutant_total = mutant_total*mutantRate;
end

[Emily Stadnicki]

Thank you so much! I was definitely missing some fundamental steps!