• Congratulations to the Class of 2024 on your results!
    Let us know how you went here
    Got a question about your uni preferences? Ask us here

MX2 Integration Marathon (3 Viewers)

Qeru

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2020
Messages
368
Gender
Male
HSC
2021
Just a question. The standard way to do this integral seems to look like a page of working at least.
Any short ways?
After looking at my working I found a big brain substitution:


Which gets you straight to:

so you can go partial fractions straight away.
 

stupid_girl

Active Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2009
Messages
221
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
N/A
It's not too hard to get the antiderivative in terms of elementary function...but the evil is in the substitution of upper and lower limits.😈
 

vernburn

Active Member
Joined
Aug 30, 2019
Messages
161
Location
Vern Gang
Gender
Male
HSC
2020
It's not too hard to get the antiderivative in terms of elementary function...but the evil is in the substitution of upper and lower limits.😈
Finding the antiderivative is very easy using a t-sub. I've shown a different way the antiderivative can be found below:






Now to evaluate the definite integral. The integrand is periodic (with segments ...0~, ~,...) and the antiderivative is periodic (with segments ...~, ~...). Note that we cannot just plug in the bounds due to this periodicity. In fact, it is only "safe" to integrate within ...~, ~...
Thus we can split the bounds into three regions: to , to (which we will treat as 1009 lots of 0 to by symmetry) and to .

Plugging all this into the antiderivative yields:

(This ignores all the shenanigans with limits going on.)

I hope this explains my thinking thoroughly enough - a lot of this is intuitive but hard to communicate.
 
Last edited:

stupid_girl

Active Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2009
Messages
221
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
N/A
Periodicity is not the cause of this trouble. If you integrate cos x, then you get sin x which is periodic. However, the substitution still works as usual.

The cause of this trouble is a different constant of integration at different intervals.

Instead of +c for all real numbers, you actually have +c0 for -pi<=x<=pi, +c1 for pi<=x<=3pi, +c2 for 3pi<=x<=5pi, etc.
 

vernburn

Active Member
Joined
Aug 30, 2019
Messages
161
Location
Vern Gang
Gender
Male
HSC
2020
Periodicity is not the cause of this trouble. If you integrate cos x, then you get sin x which is periodic. However, the substitution still works as usual.

The cause of this trouble is a different constant of integration at different intervals.

Instead of +c for all real numbers, you actually have +c0 for -pi<=x<=pi, +c1 for pi<=x<=3pi, +c2 for 3pi<=x<=5pi, etc.
Ok, thanks for the insight!
 

CM_Tutor

Moderator
Moderator
Joined
Mar 11, 2004
Messages
2,642
Gender
Male
HSC
N/A
Periodicity is not the cause of this trouble. If you integrate cos x, then you get sin x which is periodic. However, the substitution still works as usual.

The cause of this trouble is a different constant of integration at different intervals.

Instead of +c for all real numbers, you actually have +c0 for -pi<=x<=pi, +c1 for pi<=x<=3pi, +c2 for 3pi<=x<=5pi, etc.
Actually, the function



has a period of and its domain and range are



In other words,



and, more generally,



It is also symmetric about , and so



It thus follows that





So, I conclude that @vernburn is correct assuming that the integral (which I didn't check) is correct.

The problem arises because the inverse tan function can only return an angle between and .
 
Last edited:

tito981

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 28, 2020
Messages
325
Location
Orange
Gender
Male
HSC
2021
This is the 2021 integration marathon thread, as i have noticed users submitting integrals on previous year's threads.

I will start off:
1/(x+x^6)
sorry for bad formatting
 

YonOra

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 21, 2020
Messages
375
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
2021

Show all necessary working, please. V tricky.
 

notme123

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 14, 2020
Messages
997
Gender
Male
HSC
2021
Same adding and subtracting the same thing trick as the previous question:









IBP on the first integral gives:



Second integral is just reverse chain rule

So in total:
this method is more intuitive and quicker I reckon esp if you know what the integral of inverse tan is off by heart.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 3)

Top