a

x
and the Denition of the Derivative
d
Our goal is to calculate the derivative
dx
a
x
. Its going to take us a while.
We start by writing down the denition of the derivative
d a
x+x x
a
x
= lim
a
dx x 0 x
We can use the rule a
x1+x2
= a
x1
a
x2
to factor out a
x
:
d a
x+x
a
x
a
x
= lim
dx x0 x
= lim
a
x
a
x
a
x
x0 x
= lim a
x
a
x
1
x0 x
As were taking this limit, were holding a and x xed while x changes (ap-
proaches zero). This means that for the purposes of taking this limit, a
x
is a
constant. We can therefore factor the constant multiple out of the limit to get:
d
x x
a
x
1
a = a lim
dx x 0 x
Weve made a good start at nding the derivative of a
x
; lets look at what
we have so far. We can see from our calculations that
d
a
x
is a
x
times some
dx
multiple whose value we dont yet know. Lets call that multiple M(a):
x
M(a) = lim
a 1
.
x 0 x
d x x
Using this denition of M(a), we can say that
dx
a = M(a)a .
1
MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu
18.01SC Single Variable Calculus
Fall 2010
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