MTH 252

Final Lab
Bonus 3
Justin Drawbert
August 5, 2010

In our Final Lab Bonus question 3, we are asked to consider the triangle formed by the x-
1
axis, y-axis, and the tangent line to the curve y = 2x at x = a. (image) We are then asked to find
an expression for the area, A, of the triangle in terms of a and to determine 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
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=− 2
x+
2a a
1 1
2
x=
2a 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

1
So the formula for the the area A, is
1 1
· 2a · = 1
2 a
This is interesting, or perhaps completely the opposite. What this says is that no matter what, for
1
any number 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.

What is interesting, is I did play around with some other functions, to make sure this wasn’t a
weird case, and found that the equation for the area of the triangle formed by the slope of a line,
(in the cases I looked at) turns out to be an equation who’s degree is 1 degree higher than the
original function, which sorta makes sense.