The single-payment compound amount factor answers the most basic question in engineering economics: what is one amount of money today worth after a number of compounding periods. The factor is one plus the interest rate raised to the number of periods, and the FE Reference Handbook tabulates it as (F/P, i%, n). Reading the factor out of the table and multiplying is usually faster on the exam than keying the exponent, and it is less error-prone. The traps are all in the period. The interest rate and the number of periods must be expressed in the same time unit. A nominal annual rate compounded monthly means the periodic rate is the annual rate divided by twelve and the number of periods is the number of months, not years. When a problem gives a nominal rate but asks for annual compounding behaviour, convert to the effective annual rate first. The second trap is direction: the compound amount factor moves money forward in time, and its reciprocal, the present worth factor (P/F, i%, n), moves it backward. Reading a table column meant for the other direction produces an answer that is wrong by exactly the square of the factor, and it will be in the choices.
Commit to an answer before opening the solution. Each problem shows the governing model, every substitution, a unit check, and why each wrong choice is wrong.
Original question written by FE Exam AI Prep from the public FE Civil exam specification. Before release, a solver model re-derived the answer twice from the question alone, without its answer key, and a critic model checked the result. No licensed engineer reviews these questions. It is not an NCEES question and does not come from any NCEES practice exam. FE Exam AI Prep is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NCEES.
FE Exam AI Prep is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NCEES. All practice questions are original and generated for study purposes based on publicly available exam specifications.