Wednesday, October 1. We made a segue from computing volumes of revolution to integration of rational functions (i.e., ratios of polynomials) by doing a volume problem that led to an integral that we didn't (yet) know how to integrate. We rotated the region between the curve y=sqrt((4+x-x^2)/(3+2*x-x^2))+1 and the lines y=1, x=0 and x=1/2 about the line y=1. (Note that one feature of this problem that was different from the examples we did on Monday was that the axis of roation was not one of the coordinate axes.) We began by trying to determine what the curve y=sqrt((4+x-x^2)/(3+2*x-x^2))+1 looked like. It's not terribly important to have an exact sketch; in fact, we were content with noting that since we were only looking at x's near 0, this function would be approximately its value at x=0, namely sqrt(4/3)+1, which is a little larger than 2. We were then able to set up the integral for the volume, Int(Pi*((sqrt((4+x-x^2)/(3+2*x-x^2))+1)-1)^2,x-0..1/2), which simplifies to Pi*Int((4+x-x^2)/(3+2*x-x^2),x=0..1/2). At this point we stopped worrying about the definite integral and began concentrating on the indefinite integral, Int((x^2-x-4)/(x^2-2*x-3),x). We didn't see a good u-substitution to make. Hoping that we might be able to simplify the integrand by canceling a common factor in the integrand, we tried to factor each of these. The denominator is x^2-2*x-3=(x-3)(x+1). It wasn't immediately clear how to factor the numerator: x^2-x-4. We ended up using the quadratic formula to solve the equation x^2-x-4=0. The solutions to this equation are x=(1+sqrt(17))/2 and x=(1-sqrt(17))/2. Therefore, x^2-x-4 = (x-(1+sqrt(17))/2)*( x-(1-sqrt(17))/2). [Here's an important observation: if we had found that the solutions of the quadratic equation involved imaginary numbers (because there was a negative number in the square root of the quadratic formula), then we would say that this qradratic polynomial is irreducible -- because it cannot be "reduced" to being written as a product of two linear terms. For the time being, we will not worry about irreducible quadratic factors, but we'll eventually do so when we look at the second half of section 7.4.] So our plan to simplify the integrand by factoring didn't work. We next tried to get as much mileage as we could out of a certain analogy between numbers and function:
Integers (e.g., 4, 3) <---> Polynomials (e.g., x+1, x^2+5)
Fractions (e.g., 4/3, 3/4) <---> Rational Functions (e.g., (x+1)/(x^2+5), (x^2+5)/(x+1))
Proper Fractions (e.g., 3/4) <---> Proper Rational Functions (e.g., (x+1)/(x^2+5))
Improper Fractions (e.g., 4/3) <---> Improper Rational Functions (e.g., (x^2+5)/(x+1))
In trying to distinguish between proper and improper rational functions, we had to decide what it meant to say that a certain rational function was larger than another; instead of using their numerical size (which could be tricky -- what would you do when the graph of one of the functions crosses the graph of the other?), we decided to use the order of the polynomials: the rational function p(x)/q(x) is proper if the oredr of the polynomial p is less than that of q. Our analogy suggests that just as we can rewrite improper fractions as the sum of an integer and a proper fraction, we should try to rewrite an improper rational function as the sum of a polynomial and a proper rational function. We saw two ways to do this, using long division and adding and subtracting in the numerator. The first of these is guaranteed to eventually give you the decompostion that you want, while the second is faster if you see how to do it. For example, in this situation, the second method consists of writing (x^2-x-4)/(x^2-2*x-3) = (x^2-2*x-3+x-1)/(x^2-2*x-3) = (x^2-2*x-3)/(x^2-2*x-3) + (x-1)/(x^2-2*x-3) = 1 + (x-1)/(x^2-2*x-3). At this point we ran out of time. [To be continued ...]
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