Chapter Contents

• Applications of Differentiation
• 1. Tangents and Normals
• 2. Newton's Method
• 3. Curvilinear Motion
• 4. Related Rates
• 5. Curve Sketching Using Differentiation
• 6. More Curve Sketching Using Differentiation
• 7. Applied Maximum and Minimum Problems
• 8. Radius of Curvature
• Applications of Differentiation Problem Solver

• Comments, Questions?

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5. Curve Sketching

by M. Bourne

NOTES:

• There are now many tools for sketching functions (Mathcad, LiveMath, Scientific Notebook, graphics calculators, etc). It is important in this section to learn the basic shapes of each curve that you meet. An understanding of the nature of each function is important for your future learning. Most mathematical modelling starts with a sketch.

• You need to be able to sketch the curve, showing important features. Avoid drawing x-y boxes and just joining the dots.

• We will be using calculus to help find important points on the curve.

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The kinds of things we will be searching for in this section are:

Finding Maxima and Minima

A local maximum occurs when y' = 0 and y' changes sign from positive to negative (as we go left to right).

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A local minimum occurs when y' = 0 and y' changes sign from negative to positive.

The Second Derivative

The second derivative can tell us the shape of a curve at any point.

• If d²y/dx² > 0, the curve will have a minimum-type shape (called concave up)

Example:

y = x² + 3x - 2 has

and for all values of x.

So it has a concave up shape for all x.

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• If d²y/dx² < 0, the curve will have a maximum-type shape (called concave down)

 

Example:

y = x³ − 2x + 5 has

and for all values of x < 0.

So it has a concave down shape only for all x < 0.

Finding Points of Inflection

A point of inflection is a point where the shape of the curve changes from a maximum-type shape (d²y/dx² < 0) to a minimum-type shape (d²y/dx² > 0).

Clearly, the point of inflection will occur when

d²y/dx² = 0 and when there is a change in sign

(from plus → minus or minus → plus) of d²y/dx².

Example 1:

Sketch the following curve by finding intercepts, maxima and minima and points of inflection:

Answer

Let's get LiveMath to draw it for us. You can confirm all the information we obtained above by zooming in on different parts of the graph.

LIVEMath

General Shapes

If we learn the general shapes of these curves, sketching becomes much easier.

In LiveMath, we can play with these basic shapes (I've included LINEAR here).

LIVEMath

Example 2:

Sketch the curve and show intercepts, maxima and minima and points of inflection:

Answer

Example 3:

Sketch the curve and show intercepts, maxima and minima and points of inflection:

Answer