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4.1

Chapter Four

Derivatives

4.1 Derivatives

Suppose

is a vector function and

is a point in the interior of the domain of

(

in the interior of a set

of real numbers means there is an interval centered at

thatis a subset of

.). The derivative is defined just as it is for a plain old everyday realvalued function, except, of course, the derivative is a vector. Specifically, we say that

is differentiable

at t

if there is a vector

such thatlim[()()]

t t

ht h t

→

+ − =

f f v

.The vector

is called the

derivative of f at t

.Now, how would we find such a thing? Suppose

f i j k

()()()()

t a t b t c t

= + +

.Then1

00000000

ht h t a t h a t hb t h b t hc t h c t h

[()()]()()()()()()

f f i j k

+ − =+ −     ++ −     ++ −    

.It should now be clear that the vector function

is differentiable at

if and only if eachof the coordinate functions

a t b t

(),(), and

c t

() is. Moreover, the vector derivative

v i j k

= + +

a t b t c t

'()'()'().Now we “know” what the derivative of a vector function is, and we know how tocompute it, but what is it, really? Let’s see. Let

f i j

()

t t t

= +

. This is, of course, avector function which describes the graph of the function

y x

. Let’s look at the

4.2

derivative of

v i j

= +

. Convince yourself that the direction of the vector

isthe direction tangent to the graph of

y x

at the point (,)

t t

003

. It is not so clear whatwe should define to be the tangent to a curve other than a plane curve. Again, vectorscome to our rescue. If

is a vector description of a space curve, the direction of thederivative

'()

vector is the

tangent

direction at the point

()

-the derivative

'()

issaid to be tangent to the curve at

()

.If

()

specifies the position of a particle at time

, then, of course, the derivativeis the

velocity

of the particle, and its length |'()|

is the

speed

. Thus the distance theparticle travels from time

t a

to time

t b

is given by the integral of the speed:

d t dt

∫

|'()|

.If the particle behaves nicely, this distance is precisely the length of the arc of the curvefrom

()

. It should be clear what we mean by “behaves nicely”. . For thedistance traveled by the particle to be the same as the length of its path, there must be no“backtracking”, or reversing direction. This means we must not allow the velocity to bezero for any

between

and

Example

Consider the function

r i j

()cossin

t t t

= +

. Then the derivative, or velocity, is

r i j

'()sincos

t t t

= − +

. This vector is indeed tangent to the curve described by

(whichwe already know to be a circle of radius 1 centered at the origin.) at

()

. Note that thescalar product

r r

()'()sincossincos

t t t t t t

⋅ = − + =

0, and so the tangent vector and thevector from the center of the circle to the point on the circle are perpendicular-a well-known fact you learned from Mrs. Turner in 4

grade. Note that the derivative is never