The bacteria took 1 hour and 40 minutes to fill the initial bottle. explain how it only took 10 minutes to fill 3 additional empty bottles.

Because bacteria multiply exponentially the time it takes for the next bottle to fill will be much lower compared to the original.

The bacteria took more time to double from 1 cell to a bottle full of cells. Once the bottle was full, each cell in the full bottle doubled, causing an additional bottle to be filled in 5 minutes. Then the 2 full bottles doubled in the next 5 minutes, causing all 3 bottles to be full.