Why could one not have 10^-5 of bacteria in a solution? Could one have 10^-5 bacteria per ml?Explain?

Question

Why could one not have 10^-5 of bacteria in a solution? Could one have 10^-5 bacteria per ml?Explain?

Answer 1

You cant have 10^-5 bacteria in total because 10^-5 is less than 1... its like asking "Why can't there be 0.00342 people in the room".

There could be 10^-5 bacteria per ml because thats an average. For example, if you had 1000 liters of water, and there were 10 bacteria in it, there would be an average of 10^-5 bacteria per ml.

Answer 2

Are you writing 10 to the power of minus 5? That is 0.00001 and you cannot have fractional bacteria.

Or are you writing 10 to the power of 5? In that case you can definitely have 100,000 bacteria in a solution, or 100,000 per ml.

Answer 3

how can you have 10^-5 bacteria, that would be like a small portion of one bacterium...

you can have 10^-5 bacteria per ml but that would be really diluted

maybe you mean 10^5 cells/ml,  sounds more like a real situation