Completely Not Scary Differentiation

Fill in the missing words from below.

Differentiation is the act of finding the __________ __________. It tells us the gradient of the _________ at every point. The notation for the gradient function is _____.

At a certain point on the curve the tangent has the _______ gradient as the curve, so we just ____________ the value of ___ into .

The normal is at _____________ to the __________so .

At a stationary point ___________, so we set the expression ________ to 0 and ________ to find x.

The ___________ derivative identifies the _______ of stationary point when we substitute in the relevant value of x.

______________ ______________


Rules you need to know…

Chain Rule ~ function of a function

substitute t =…

Product Rule ~ function × function

Quotient Rule ~ function ÷ function

Exercise A – polynomials

Differentiate, using the chain/product/quotient rule where necessary.

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Exercise B – exponentials

Differentiate, using the chain/product/quotient rule where necessary.

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Exercise C – logarithms

Differentiate, using the chain/product/quotient rule where necessary.

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Exercise D – using your differential

1. Calculate the gradient of at x=2.

2. Find the co-ordinates of the stationary points on the curve .

3. At what point does the curve have a gradient of 2?

4. What is the equation of the tangent to the curve at the point ? (Leave your answer in terms of e.)

5. A function is such that . Find the x-coordinates of the stationary points of the graph and, by finding , decide whether each is a maximum or a minimum.

6. Find the equation of the normal to the curve at x=2.

7. Find the second derivative of .

8. Find the co-ordinates of the stationary point of and hence sketch the graph.