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MTH 252

Final Lab
Bonus 3
Justin Drawbert
August 10, 2010

In our Final Lab Bonus Project 3, we are asked to consider the triangle formed by the x-axis,
1
y-axis, and the tangent line to the curve y = 2x at x = a.

A
1/(2x)
a

We are then asked to find an expression for the area, A, of the triangle in terms of a and to deter-
mine what happens as a → ∞.

We start by finding the derivative to our original function.


1 1
y= , y′ = −
2x 2x2
We then use the following form to find the equation for the line tangent to our curve at point a.

y − f (a) = f ′ (a)(x − a)

By this we get our equation for our line


1 1
y− = − 2 (x − a)
2a 2a
1 1 1
y− = − 2x +
2a 2a 2a
1 1
y=− 2 +
2a a

1
So we now have our equation for our line. We can see that the triangle formed by the tangent line
is a right triangle so we know the equation for the area is simply
1
b·h
2
Where b is the base, or in this case our x-intercept minus 0 and h is the height, or our y-intercept
minus 0.

We solve for our x-intercept by setting the equation of the line equal to 0 and then solving for
x.
1 1
0=− x+
2a2 a
1 1
x=
2a2 a
1
x = · 2a2
a
x = 2a

We then find our y-intercept by letting x = 0


1 1 1
y=− (0) + =
2a2 a a
So the formula for the the area A, is
1 1
· 2a · = 1
2 a
This is interesting, or perhaps not at all. What this says is that no matter what, for any number
1
a, the area of the triangle formed by the line tangent to y = 2x , at the point x = a, will always be
1. There’s no need to even evaluate a limit here. Because before you could, the a’s would cancel,
and you’d be left evaluating the limit of a constant, which in our case happens to be 1. And the
limit as any variable approaches anything of the constant 1 is 1.

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