Introduction to Related Rates We’re continuing with a related rates problem from last class. Example: Police are 30 feet from the side of the road. Their radar sees your car approaching at 80 feet per second when your car is 50 feet away from the radar gun. The speed limit is 65 miles per hour (which translates to 95 feet per second). Are you speeding? Police 30 D=50 Road x Car Figure 1: Illustration of example 1: triangle with the police, the car, the road, D and x labeled. We chose t to stand for time in seconds, x to represent the distance along the road from your car to the police car, and D to represent the straight line distance between your car and the police car. dx We know that dD dt = −80ft/sec and want to ﬁnd out whether dt < −95ft/sec ∼ = 65mi/hr. To answer this question we need to understand how x is related to D. First, we know from the Pythagorean theorem that: 302 + x2 = D2 We’ll diﬀerentiate this equation with respect to time using implicit diﬀerentia tion; we could solve for x, but this would take longer. While we do this, we must be careful not to replace a variable like D by a constant like 50. The number 50 is a constant — its rate of change is 0. The rate of change of D is −80ft/sec. We must diﬀerentiate ﬁrst before plugging in values. � d � 2 d � 2� 2DD� 30 + x2 = D =⇒ 2xx� = 2DD� =⇒ x� = dt dt 2x Now we can plug in the instantaneous numerical values: x� = 2 · 50 · (−80) feet ∼ mi = −100 = −68 2 · 40 s hr This exceeds the speed limit of 95 feet per second. You are, in fact, speeding. There is another, longer, way of solving this problem. Start with: � D = 302 + x2 = (302 + x2 )1/2 d 1 dx D = (302 + x2 )−1/2 (2x ) dt 2 dt Plug in the values: −80 = 1 dx (302 + 402 )−1/2 (2)(40) 2 dt and solve to ﬁnd: dx feet = −100 dt s √ 2 A third strategy is to diﬀerentiate x = D − 302 . It is easiest to diﬀerentiate the equation in its simplest algebraic form 302 + x2 = D2 , which was our ﬁrst approach. The general strategy for these types of problems is: 1. Draw a picture. Set up variables and equations. 2. Take derivatives. 3. Plug in the given values. Don’t plug the values in until after taking the derivatives.