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Hello, everyone! I'm a bit late to this one; yesterday was pretty hectic. Fortunately, this quiz is only on 4.1 to 4.3 - at the risk of taunting Murphy, it should be a milk run.
The only question in worksheet 4.1 is just a classification task. We're given a bunch of equations and asked if they're linear or nonlinear, and if linear, if they're homogeneous or nonhomogeneous.
Finally we're doing existence in second-order linear DEs! The idea is pretty much the same as first-order: having an equation in the form `y'' + p(t)y' + q(t)y = r(t)`, the interval of existence is the intersection of the intervals of existence of `p(t)`, `q(t)`, and `r(t)`. We handle IVPs much the same way, as well: the interval around our initial point `t_0` is the interval of existence for that specific solution.
We're given the IVP `t(t - 4)y'' + 3ty' + 4y = 2, y(3) = 0, y'(3) = 1`. This is clearly a nonhomogeneous 2OLDE; to find our intervals of existence, we need to get the coefficient of `y''` to be just `1`. We do this by dividing the entire equation by `t(t - 4)`: `y'' + frac 3 {t - 4} y' + frac 4 {t(t - 4)} y = frac 2 {t(t - 4)}`. Clearly, `p(t) = frac 3 {t - 4}`, `q(t) = frac 4 {t(t - 4)}`, and `r(t) = frac 2 {t(t - 4)}`. `q(t)` and `r(t)` have the same interval of existence; they're defined whenever `t(t - 4)` is nonzero, so `(-oo, 0) cup (0, 4) cup (4, oo)`. `p(t)` is defined for `(-oo, 4) cup (4, oo)`. Since our starting point is `t=3`, it falls inside the `(0, 4)` range - meaning the interval of existence of our solution is `0 < t < 4`.
This question is fairly cryptic; as best as I can tell, it's asking us to find some variant of `y = c_1 e^{x} + c_2 e^{-x}` that matches the IVP `y'' - y = 0, y(0) = 0, y'(0) = 1`. Because we already know `y` in terms of some arbitrary constants, we can immediately skip to solving the IVP: differentiating gives us `y' = c_1 e^x - c_2 e^{-x}`, and substituting into our equations for `y` and `y'` respectively gives us `0 = c_1 + c_2, 1 = c_1 - c_2`. These easily solve to `c_1 = frac 1 2, c_2 = - frac 1 2`, so our final result is `y = frac 1 2 e^x - frac 1 2 e^{-x}`.
Finally, some solving! We're given the pleasant linear homogeneous equation `2y'' - 5y' - 3y = 0`, and asked to solve and graph. I'm not going to post the graphs here, but you should do them for practice!
Because this is homogeneous and has constant coefficients, we can instantly turn it into an auxiliary polynomial, find the roots `lambda_1` and `lambda_2`, and substitute them into the general solution `y = c_1 e^{lambda_1 t} + c_2 e^{lambda_2 t}`. For an equation `a y'' + by' + cy = 0`, the auxiliary polynomial is `a lambda^2 + b lambda + c = 0`, so we have `2 lambda^2 - 5 lambda - 3 = 0`. This solves easily to `lambda_1 = - frac 1 2`, `lambda_2 = 3`. Substituting these in gives us `y = c_1 e^{- frac 1 2 t} + c_2 e^{3t}`.
Remember that phase portraits are parametric graphs in terms of `y` and `y'`, and solution graphs are normal solution graphs in terms of `y` and `t`. You can find `y'` by differentiating `y` if you didn't use a technique that provides `y'` as a side effect.
This isn't hard at all, but it's important to understand. We're given an equation `x^2y'' - 6xy' + 12y = 0`, and asked to verify that `y_1(x) = x^3, y_2(x) = x^4` is a fundamental solution set. The idea is that two solutions are a fundamental set if the corresponding SLDE matrix they produce is not singular; it's probably easier to just do the question than to explain the process. Our first step is to verify that these are actually solutions: the substitution is fairly simple, and I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader. We now take the derivatives `y_1' = 3x^2` and `y_2' = 4x^3` and populate a matrix: `\[\[x^3, x^4], \[3x^2 + 4x^3]]`. Note that this is actually an SLDE matrix. As long as the determinant of this is nonzero, we have a linearly independent solution. The determinant is `x^6`, which is not always 0, so the solution is linearly independent. Easy-peasy!
[/] [=author "Tyler Clarke"] [=date "2025-6-17"] [=subject "Calculus"] [=title "Differential Quiz 3"] [=unpub] [#post.html]