Practice Problems

Work through the odd-numbered problems 1-9. Once you have completed the problem set, check your answers for the odd-numbered questions.

Problems

1. What is the slope of the line through (3,9) and (x, y) for y=x^{2} and x=2.97? x=3.001? \mathrm{x}=3+\mathrm{h}? What happens to this last slope when \mathrm{h} is very small (close to 0)? Sketch the graph of y=x^{2} for x near 3.

3. What is the slope of the line through (2,4) and (x, y) for y=x^{2}+x-2 and x=1.99? \mathrm{x}=2.004? \mathrm{x}=2+\mathrm{h}? What happens to this last slope when \mathrm{h} is very small? Sketch the graph of y=x^{2}+x-2 for x near 2.

5. Fig. 9 shows the temperature during a day in Ames.


(a) What was the average change in temperature from 9 am to 1 pm?

(b) Estimate how fast the temperature was rising at 10 am and at 7 pm?

7. Fig. 11 shows the distance of a car from a measuring position located on the edge of a straight road.

(a) What was the average velocity of the car from \mathrm{t}=0 to \mathrm{t}=20 seconds?
(b) What was the average velocity from \mathrm{t}=10 to \mathrm{t}=30 seconds?
(c) About how fast was the car traveling at \mathrm{t}=10 seconds? at \mathrm{t}=20 \mathrm{~s} ? at \mathrm{t}=30 \mathrm{~s}?

Problem 9 defines new functions A(x) in terms of AREAS bounded by the functions y=3 and y=x+1. This may seem a strange way to define a functions A(x), but this idea will become important later in calculus. We are just getting an early start here.

9. Define A(x) to be the area bounded by the x and y axes, the horizontal line \mathrm{y}=3, and the vertical line at \mathrm{x} (Fig. 13). For example, \mathrm{A}(4)=12 is the area of the 4 by 3 rectangle.

a) Evaluate A(0), A(1), A(2), A(2.5) and A(3).
b) What area would \mathrm{A}(4)-\mathrm{A}(1) represent in the figure?
c) Graph \mathrm{y}=\mathrm{A}(\mathrm{x}) for 0 \leq \mathrm{x} \leq 4.


Source: Dale Hoffman, https://s3.amazonaws.com/saylordotorg-resources/wwwresources/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/MA005-2.1-Tangent-Lines-Velocities-Growth.pdf

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.