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I would suggest completing today's worksheets by Monday, which we will go over together to make sure that you get your questions answered.
Also feel free to bring other questions to class.
The operator has to act on something (or, as I like to say, it needs something to eat!:).
What's $\sqrt{}$? (It's nothing without an argument.) What's $\sin{}$? (That's right -- sine without an argument is a sin!)
Treat limits the same way.
This proof made use of one of our new tools (the product rule). Once you build and prove a tool, it becomes a power tool:).
The power rule works for any real exponent -- it's just that we've only proven it for positive integers. You may use it for other powers (e.g. $\sqrt{x}=x^\frac{1}{2}$).
This says that an exponential function has a slope function which is just a constant times the function itself (and the constant is the log, base \(e\), of \(a\)).
In particular, let $F(x)=e^x$, where $e \approx 2.71828$ (it's irrational, like $\pi$). Then \[ \frac{d}{dx}[F(x)] = \frac{d}{dx}[e^x] = e^x = F(x) \hspace{1in} (= F'(x) = F''(x) = F'''(x) = ....) \]
Hopefully the Preview Activity for 2.2 has helped you to make sense of this.
Here's an animation which motivates the discussion...
But we'll obtain this theorem by using tools we've already built; in particular, the product rule, and a trick to get the derivative of the multiplicative inverse of a function.
A theorem that you prove on the way to proving some theorem is called a "lemma".
From this result, and the product rule, we can establish the quotient rule.
We'll need a couple of limits to establish this one, as well as one trig identity: \[ \sin(a+b)=\sin(a)\cos(b)+\sin(b)\cos(a) \]
This is a consequence of the derivative of sine, by symmetry and periodicity.
Further consequences: \[ \frac{d^2}{dx^2}[\sin(x)]=-\sin(x) \] \[ \frac{d^3}{dx^3}[\sin(x)]=-\cos(x) \] \[ \frac{d^4}{dx^4}[\sin(x)]=\sin(x) \]
The sine (and cosine) functions are their own fourth derivatives.