- Topic
- L’Hôpital’s rule
- Difficulty
- Introductory
- Suggested time
- 3 min
- Marks
- 2
L’Hôpital’s rule practice question 6
Evaluate the limit.
What do and each do as ? L’Hôpital’s rule works on quotients, so how could you rewrite a product?
The form is . Rewrite the product as a quotient, , which has the form .
Differentiate the top with the chain rule: the derivative of is .
A whole number.
Theory UBC Math 100 §6CLP-1 §3.7Key results
Worked solution
Strategy
A growing factor times a shrinking one. Move the growing x into the denominator as 1/x, so that the rule applies to a 0/0 quotient.
Working
Dividing by 1/x is the same as multiplying by x.
Chain rule on the top; the −1/x² factors cancel.
3/x → 0, and cos 0 = 1.
Answer
The answer is three.
Check
At x = 100 it is 100 sin(0.03) ≈ 2.99955, just under 3, since sin u < u for u > 0.
Where this goes wrong
Answering 0 because sin(3/x) → 0. The other factor grows without bound at the same time, and ∞ · 0 is indeterminate; written as a quotient, the rule gives 3.
Leans on
The chain rule, from The chain rule and logarithms
Try a similar question
Evaluate .Saved in this browser only.