Implicit differentiation

Bit hard to understand it in the first place.

What is Implicit & Explicit Function

Refer to video by Krista King: What is implicit differentiation?

  • Explicit function: it's the normal function we've seen a lot before, which's in the form of y = x....

  • Implicit function: it't NOT YET in the general form of a function and not easily separated, like x² + y² = 1

So knowing how to differentiate an implicit function is quite helpful when we're dealing with those NOT EASILY SEPARATED functions.

How to Differentiate Implicit function

Refer to video: Use implicit differentiation to find the second derivative of y (y'') (KristaKingMath) Refer to video by The Organic Chemistry Tutor: Implicit Differentiation Explained - Product Rule, Quotient & Chain Rule - Calculus

Refer to Symbolab: Implicit Derivative Calculator

Assume you are to differentiate Y WITH RESPECT to X, written as dy/dx:

  • Differentiate terms with X as normal

  • Differentiate terms with Y as the same to X, BUT multiply by (dy/dx)

  • Differentiate terms MIXED with X & Y by using Product Rule, then differentiate each term.

How to differentiate Y with respect to X

How to differentiate term MIXED with both X & Y

Example

  • Treat y as y(x)

  • Apply the Sum Rule:

  • Apply the normal rules to X term, and

  • Apply the Product Rule to the Mixed term, and

  • Apply the Chain Rule to the Y term:

  • Operate the equation and solve for dy/dx, and get:

Example

  • First thing we need to find the RIGHT equation of Chain rule. Since it's asking us to find dy/dt, so we will re-write it to this one to form an equation:

  • Then since we've given the dx/dt = -3, we only need to find out the dy/dx to get the result.

  • We've got an equation of x & y, regardless whom it's respecting to. So we can do either Implicit or Explicit differentiation to the equation y²=7x+1, with respect to y:

  • Use the implicit differentiation method, we got the dy/dx = 7/2y

  • And since y=6, so 7/2y = 7/12

  • Back to the Chain Rule equation, we get dy/dt = 7/12 · (-3) = -7/4 = -1.75

Example

  • Remind you that, in this problem, it's NOT respecting to x anymore, so you need to change mind before getting confused.

  • First thing we need to find the RIGHT equation of Chain rule. Since it's asking us to find dx/dt, so we will re-write it to this one to form an equation:

  • Then since we've given the dy/dt = -0.5, we only need to find out the dx/dy to get the result.

  • We've got an equation of x & y, regardless whom it's respecting to. It seems easier to differentiate explicitly:

  • Then we use d/dx to differentiate the equation to get: dx/dy = y⁻² = (0.2)⁻² = 25

  • Back to the Chain Rule equation, we get dx/dt = dx/dy · dy/dt = 25 * (-0.5) = -12.5.

Example

  • Form an equation:

  • dx/dt has been given equals to 5, so just to find out dy/dx:

  • And get:

  • Now let's see what is sin(x) equal to:

  • All done.

Vertical & Horizontal Tangents of Implicit Equations

► Jump over to Khan academy for practice.

Example

  • Plug in y = 0 into the equation and get that x = -6, which is the answer.

Example

  • To have a Vertical Tangent, we have to let the derivative become Undefined,

  • which in this case is to let the denominator equal to zero:

  • Solve this equation out we get that x = 3y², which means this relationship is true at the point of vertical tangent line.

  • Plug that back to the original function to get y = -1, which means the vertical tangent goes through this point.

  • Substitute y back and get x = 3

  • The answer is (3, -1).

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