Calculus 2 : Parametric Form

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for Calculus 2

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Example Questions

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Example Question #91 : Parametric Form

Find the arc length of the curve (Round to three significant digits):

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

Finding the length of the curve requires simply applying the formula:

Where:

 

Since we are also given  and , we can easily compute the derivatives of each:

Applying these into the above formula results in:

Looking at this integral, it seems pretty intimidating at first, but we can do some algebraic manipulation to make it look like a simple u-substitution problem. First we notice that there is a  term that is common within the two separate functions. If we factor it out then the integral becomes:

Now we can apply the rules of u-substitution:

Therefore:

Now we must deal with the new bounds of our integral:

Our new integral becomes:

Plugging this result into a calculator results in:

Because the problem statement requires us to round this to three significant figures, the final result is:

This is one of the answer choices.

Example Question #92 : Parametric Form

Find the arc length of the curve:

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

Finding the length of the curve requires simply applying the formula:

Where:

 

Since we are also given  and , we can easily compute the derivatives of each:

Applying these into the above formula results in:

We can factor out the common , and pull it outside of the square-root, and we will notice one of the most common trigonometric identities:

The term inside the square-root symbol can be simplified to .

This is one of the answer choices.

Example Question #93 : Parametric Form

Find the arc length of the curve:

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

Finding the length of the curve requires simply applying the formula:

Where:

 

Since we are also given  and , we can easily compute the derivatives of each, using the Product Rule:

Applying these into the above formula results in:

Simplifying the above will require these two formulas:

It may also be useful to know this formula:

We can factor out the common  to make the above expression easier to look at:

We can take the  outside of the square-root by cancelling out the  representing the "square". Then we can apply formulas  &  to the trigonometric expressions:

We can now simplify the terms inside the square-root to get:

If we factor out the common "2" above, we are left with the trigonometric identity, which simplifies to , since:

Therefore the integral now becomes:

This is a simple integral which can be solved using u-substitution. But first, we can factor out the constant term , outside of the integral:

We will make our substitutions:

We also need to change the bounds of the new integral:

Our new integral becomes:

This is one of the answer choices.

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