AP Calculus AB : AP Calculus AB

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for AP Calculus AB

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Example Questions

Example Question #21 : Riemann Sums (Left, Right, And Midpoint Evaluation Points)

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

Example Question #23 : Riemann Sums (Left, Right, And Midpoint Evaluation Points)

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

Example Question #21 : Riemann Sums (Left, Right, And Midpoint Evaluation Points)

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

Example Question #21 : Riemann Sums (Left, Right, And Midpoint Evaluation Points)

Let .

A relative maximum of the graph of   can be located at:

Possible Answers:

The graph of  has no relative maximum.

Correct answer:

Explanation:

At a relative minimum  of the graph , it will hold that  and 

First, find . Using the sum rule,

Differentiate the individual terms using the Constant Multiple and Power Rules:

Set this equal to 0:

Either:

, in which case, ; this equation has no real solutions.

 has two real solutions,  and 

Now take the second derivative, again using the sum rule:

Differentiate the individual terms using the Constant Multiple and Power Rules:

Substitute  for :

Therefore,  has a relative minimum at .

Now. substitute  for :

Therefore,  has a relative maximum at .

Example Question #26 : Riemann Sums (Left, Right, And Midpoint Evaluation Points)

Estimate the integral of  from 0 to 3 using left-Riemann sum and 6 rectangles. Use 

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

Because our  is constant, the left Riemann sum will be

Example Question #21 : Riemann Sums (Left, Right, And Midpoint Evaluation Points)

Use Left Riemann sums with 4 subintervals to approximate the area between the x-axis, , , and .

 

 

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

To use left Riemann sums, we need to use the following formula:

.

where  is the number of subintervals, (4 in our problem),

is the "counter" that denotes which subinterval we are working with,(4 subintervals mean that will be 1, 2, 3, and then 4)

is the function value when you plug in the "i-th" x value, (i-th in this case will be 1-st, 2-nd, 3-rd, and 4-th)

, is the width of each subinterval, which we will determine shortly.

and means add all versions together (for us that means add up 4 versions).

 

This fancy equation approximates using boxes. We can rewrite this fancy equation by writing , 4 times; 1 time each for , , , and . This gives us

Think of as the base of each box, and  as the height of the 1st box.

This is basically , 4 times, and then added together.

Now we need to determine what and are.

To find we find the total length between the beginning and ending x values, which are given in the problem as and . We then split this total length into 4 pieces, since we are told to use 4 subintervals.

In short,

Now we need to find the x values that are the left endpoints of each of the 4 subintervals. Left endpoints because we are doing Left Riemann sums.

The left most x value happens to be the smaller of the overall endpoints given in the question. In other words, since we only care about the area from to , we'll just use the smaller one, , for our first .

Now we know that .

To find the next endpoint, , just increase the first x by the length of the subinterval, which is . In other words

Add the again to get

And repeat to find

Now that we have all the pieces, we can plug them in.

 

plug each value into and then simplify.

This is the final answer, which is an approximation of the area under the function.

Example Question #26 : Second Derivatives

Find the points of inflection of 

Possible Answers:

 

 

There are no points of inflection.

Correct answer:

 

Explanation:

We will find the points of inflection by setting our second derivative to zero.

Take the derivative again,

then set this equal to zero and reverse foil,

These are our points of inflection.

Example Question #1 : Points Of Inflection

If  is a twice-differentiable function, and , find the  values of the inflection point(s) of  on the interval .

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

To find the inflection points of , we need to find  (which lucky for us, is already given!) set it equal to , and solve for .

 

. Start

. Divide by . We can do this, because  is never equal to .

On the unit circle, the values  cause , but only  is inside our interval . so  is the only value to consider here.

 

To prove that  is actually part of a point of inflection, we have to test an  value on the left and the right of , and substitute them into  and test their signs.

.

Hence , is the  coordinate of an inflection point of  on the interval .

Example Question #521 : Derivatives

At what value(s) does the following function have an inflection point?

Possible Answers:

No inflection points.

 only

 only

 

Correct answer:

Explanation:

Inflection points of a function occur when the second derivative equals zero. Therefore, we simply need to take two derivatives of our function, and solve.

Therefore, the two values that makes this function go to zero are 

Example Question #3 : Points Of Inflection

Determine the points of inflection for the following function:

Possible Answers:

This function has no points of inflection

Correct answer:

Explanation:

To determine the points of inflection, we must find the value at which the second derivative of the function changes in sign.

First, we find the second derivative:

The derivatives were found using the following rules:

Next, we find the values at which the second derivative of the function is equal to zero:

Using the critical value, we now create intervals over which to evaluate the sign of the second derivative:

Notice how at the bounds of the intervals, the second derivative is neither positive nor negative.

Evaluating the sign simply by plugging in any value on the given interval into the second derivative function, we find that on the first interval, the second derivative is negative, while on the second interval, the second derivative is positive. The second derivative changed sign , so there exists the point of inflection for the function. 

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