Logistic growth: More examples of logistic growth
Autocatalysis in chemistry
We look into the kinetics of the following autocatalytic chemical reaction in which the reaction rate is proportional to the product of the concentrations of the substances A and B, say for some constant . The rate of formation of substance B satisfies the differential equation Because of the stoichiometry of the reaction, the sum of the concentrations of the substances A and B is constant, say Then we can rewrite the equation for the formation of substance B So, the concentration of substance B satisfies a logistic differential equation and is explicitly described by a logistic function. Below is a simulation of this kinetic model. Play with parameter choices and verify that the concentration of B is limited form above and that this upper bound is reached even when there is only a little bit of substance B present at the start of the reaction.
Such autocatalytic model is not a theoretical model, suitable only for chemical reactions: three examples of other types of autocatalytic processes are
- coagulation of milk during the cheese-making;
- coagulation of blood;
- production of a protein that activates a transcription factor for its own expression (positive feedback)