Question: Throughout much of the 20th century, the yearly consumption of electricity in the US increased exponentially at a continuous rate of 7% per year. Assume this trend continues and that the electrical energy consumed in 1900 was 1.4 million megawatt-hours.
(a) Write an expression for yearly electricity consumption as a function of time, t, in years since 1900.
(b) Find the average yearly electrical consumption throughout the 20th century.
(c) During what year was electrical consumption closest to the average for the century?
(d) Without doing the calculation for part (c), how could you have predicted which half of the century the answer would be in?