Modeling with differential equations

ordinary differential equations

I am struggling a bit to convert a word/modeling problem into a differential equation to then solve.

The question is:
Assume a town has a population of 100,000 citizens, within a week 10,000 people are mysteriously ill. Assume that the rate of increase
of the number who are ill is proportional to the number of people who have not yet fallen ill. How long will it be until half the town have fallen ill?

I think it should end up being something like ds/dt=r(s-100000) where s is the number of people that have fallen sick and r is some rate for it to be proportional to.

Best Answer

$$\frac{ds}{dt} = k(100000 - s)$$

$$\frac{ds}{(100000 - s)} = k\ dt$$

$$\ln(100000 - s) = kt + C$$

$$100000 - s = Ce^{kt}$$

$$\text{When}\ t = 0, C = 100000 - 10000 = 90 000$$

$$\text{When}\ t = -7, k = \frac{\ln\frac{10}{9}}{-7} = -.01505$$

$$s = 100000 - 90000e^{-.01505t}$$

$$50000 = 90000e^{-.01505t}$$

$$t = \frac{\ln\frac{5}{9}}{-.01505}$$

$$t = 39\ \text{days}$$