[tex]1-e^{-0.15*10^{-5}*y}=0.1[/tex]
What you need to do is make y the subject. The 'y' is currently inside the exponential (e^), and the way you can get rid of the e^ is to ln() it. Because ln(e^x) = x.
First you take 1 from each side, and then make both sides positive (multiply by -1).
[tex]e^{-0.15*10^{-5}*y}=0.9[/tex]
Then you can log both sides with the natural logarithm:
[tex]\ln{(e^{-0.15*10^{-5}*y})}=\ln{0.9}[/tex]
And because ln(e^x) = x (this is just the definition of the natural log), you can get rid of the ln() and the e^ on the left, because they
cancel each other out.
[tex]-0.15*10^{-5}*y=\ln{0.9}[/tex]
You then divide both sides by (-0.15*10^(-5)):
[tex]\frac{(-0.15*10^{-5})*y}{(-0.15*10^{-5})}=\frac{\ln{0.9}}{-0.15*10^{-5}}[/tex]
[tex]y=\frac{\ln{0.9}}{-0.15*10^{-5}}[/tex]
This is the same result as
symbolipoint got.
The decimal approximation of this is about 21,072.
edit: it is actually 70,240 (I typed it wrong on my calculator) 