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Calculus of variations is concerned with variations of functionals, which are small changes in the functional's value due to small changes in the function that is its argument. The first variation [l] is defined as the linear part of the change in the functional, and the second variation [m] is defined as the quadratic part. [22]
In mathematics, the direct method in the calculus of variations is a general method for constructing a proof of the existence of a minimizer for a given functional, [1] introduced by Stanisław Zaremba and David Hilbert around 1900. The method relies on methods of functional analysis and topology. As well as being used to prove the existence of ...
In mathematics, variation of parameters, also known as variation of constants, is a general method to solve inhomogeneous linear ordinary differential equations.. For first-order inhomogeneous linear differential equations it is usually possible to find solutions via integrating factors or undetermined coefficients with considerably less effort, although those methods leverage heuristics that ...
In mathematics, differential calculus is a subfield of calculus that studies the rates at which quantities change. [1] It is one of the two traditional divisions of calculus, the other being integral calculus—the study of the area beneath a curve.
Phase portrait showing saddle-node bifurcation. Bifurcation theory is the mathematical study of changes in the qualitative or topological structure of a given family of curves, such as the integral curves of a family of vector fields, and the solutions of a family of differential equations.
The first successful step in the generalization of this concept to functions of several variables was due to Leonida Tonelli, [1] who introduced a class of continuous BV functions in 1926 (Cesari 1986, pp. 47–48), to extend his direct method for finding solutions to problems in the calculus of variations in more than one variable.
Hamilton's principle states that the true evolution q(t) of a system described by N generalized coordinates q = (q 1, q 2, ..., q N) between two specified states q 1 = q(t 1) and q 2 = q(t 2) at two specified times t 1 and t 2 is a stationary point (a point where the variation is zero) of the action functional [] = ((), ˙ (),) where (, ˙,) is the Lagrangian function for the system.
However, more insidious are missing solutions, which can occur when performing operations on expressions that are invalid for certain values of those expressions. For example, if we were solving the following equation, the correct solution is obtained by subtracting 4 {\displaystyle 4} from both sides, then dividing both sides by 2 ...