In this section we need to take a look at the equation of a line in R 3 R 3 . As we saw in the previous section the equation y = m x + b y = m x + b does not describe a line in R 3 R 3 , instead it describes a plane. This doesn’t mean however that we can’t write down an equation for a line in 3-D space. We’re just going to need a new way of writing down the equation of a curve. So, before we get into the equations of lines we first need to briefly look at vector functions. We’re going to take a more in depth look at vector functions later. At this point all that we need to worry about is notational issues and how they can be used to give the equation of a curve. The best way to get an idea of what a vector function is and what its graph looks like is to look at an example. So, consider the following vector function. → r ( t ) = ⟨ t , 1 ⟩ r → ( t ) = ⟨ t , 1 ⟩ A vector function is a function that takes one or more variables, one in this case, and returns a...
Example 3 Solve the following BVP.
Again, we have the following general solution,
This time the boundary conditions give us,
In this case we have a set of boundary conditions each of which requires a different value of in order to be satisfied. This, however, is not possible and so in this case have no solution.
This time the boundary conditions give us,
In this case we have a set of boundary conditions each of which requires a different value of in order to be satisfied. This, however, is not possible and so in this case have no solution.
So, with Examples 2 and 3 we can see that only a small change to the boundary conditions, in relation to each other and to Example 1, can completely change the nature of the solution. All three of these examples used the same differential equation and yet a different set of initial conditions yielded, no solutions, one solution, or infinitely many solutions.
Note that this kind of behavior is not always unpredictable however. If we use the conditions and the only way we’ll ever get a solution to the boundary value problem is if we have,
for any value of . Also, note that if we do have these boundary conditions we’ll in fact get infinitely many solutions.
All the examples we’ve worked to this point involved the same differential equation and the same type of boundary conditions so let’s work a couple more just to make sure that we’ve got some more examples here. Also, note that with each of these we could tweak the boundary conditions a little to get any of the possible solution behaviors to show up (i.e.zero, one or infinitely many solutions).
Example 4 Solve the following BVP.
The general solution for this differential equation is,
Applying the boundary conditions gives,
In this case we get a single solution,
Applying the boundary conditions gives,
In this case we get a single solution,
Example 5 Solve the following BVP.
Here the general solution is,
and we’ll need the derivative to apply the boundary conditions,
Applying the boundary conditions gives,
This is not possible and so in this case have no solution.
and we’ll need the derivative to apply the boundary conditions,
Applying the boundary conditions gives,
This is not possible and so in this case have no solution.
All of the examples worked to this point have been nonhomogeneous because at least one of the boundary conditions have been non-zero. Let’s work one nonhomogeneous example where the differential equation is also nonhomogeneous before we work a couple of homogeneous examples.
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