Lec 26: Implicit differentiation and related rates

MATH 147 Section 2, Fall Term 2022

I Implicit differentiation
I Logarithmic differentiation
I Related rates

Key references: Not much in text books. See Hairer & Wanner, pp. 88–90.
Implicit differentiation

Recall that the graph of a function is the set of all points (x, y ) ∈ R2 satisfying y = f (x). The derivative
f 0 (x) = dy
dx
is the slope at a point on the graph.
What if we don’t know the formula for f (x) but we have a (more complicated) equation relating x and
y?
Example: x 2 y 2 + xy 3 = 1.
If we assume that y actually is a function of x, we say that y is implicitly defined by this equation. If we further
assume that y is differentiable, then we can use the Chain Rule (and arithmetic rules) to differentiate both sides
of the equation with respect to x. This technique is known as implicit differentiation.
2
dy 2xy +y
(For the example above, we should end up with dx
= − 2x 2 +3xy .)
Examples using implicit differentiation

Exercise
d
Use implicit differentiation to show that dx
ln(x) = 1/x.
Consider the implicit equation e y = x.

Exercise
Find the slope of the tangent line at a point on the circle x 2 + y 2 = 1.
Remarks about implicit differentiation

1. This technique is powerful because it can work on many complicated-looking implicit equations.
dy
2. It may not be possible to obtain an explicit formula for dx
as a function of x.
3. There could be more than one function f such that y = f (x) satisfies the implicit equation.
4. Be careful interpreting the outcome as there may not actually be a graph at all!
Consider the implicit equation y 4 + 1 = −x 4 − x 2 y 2 .
Logarithmic differentiation
This is based on implicit differentiation. It can be helpful even if the basic differentiation rules would also
work.
√
x 3/4 x 2 − 1
We illustrate it with the following example: find the derivative of f (x) = .
(x 2 + 1)2
Step 1: Take logarithm1 of both sides of the equation y = f (x), applying rules for logarithms.

3 1
ln(y ) = ln(x) + ln(x 2 − 1) − 2 ln(x 2 + 1)
4 2
Step 2: Differentiate implicitly with respect to x.
1 dy 3 1 2
= + · 2x − 2 · 2x
y dx 4x 2(x 2 − 1) x +1
3 x 4x
= + 2 − 2
4x x −1 x +1
Step 3: Rearrange to get y 0 as function of x.
 
dy 3 x 4x
=y + 2 − 2
dx 4x x −1 x +1
√
x 3/4 x 2 − 1
 
3 x 4x
= 2 2
+ 2 − 2
(x + 1) 4x x −1 x +1
1
If f (x) can be negative, then take the absolute values before taking logarithms.
Related rates

This topic refers to a situation, often arising in sciences or real world scenarios, where one can define or measure
multiple quantities that change simultaneously following some governing equation.
We can work out rates of change of one quantity from the others.
We previously considered the example of rate of change of potential energy with time, where we simply need to
apply the Chain Rule.
Other related rates problems can be more involved, but generally also use the Chain Rule or implicit
differentiation.

Example
A car travels along a straight path such that it is 3 m from you at the closest point. Using a speed gun, you
determine that the distance between you and the car is changing at a rate of 60 km/h when the car is 5 m away
from you. How quickly is the car travelling?

Example
The ideal gas equation (ignoring units) is PV = T . Suppose a fixed amount of gas is kept at a constant
pressure but allowed to expand as it is heated. At a certain time, the temperature is T = 10, the rate of change
of temperature is dT
dt
= 4 and the rate of change of volume is dVdt
= 2. What is the volume at this time?