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Functions that maximize or minimize functionals may be found using the Euler–Lagrange equation of the calculus of variations. A simple example of such a problem is to find the curve of shortest length connecting two points. If there are no constraints, the solution is a straight line between the points. However, if the curve is constrained to ...
A coefficient is usually a constant quantity, but the differential coefficient of f is a constant function only if f is a linear function. When f is not linear, its differential coefficient is a function, call it f ′, derived by the differentiation of f, hence, the modern term, derivative. The older usage is now rarely seen.
In the calculus of variations and classical mechanics, the Euler–Lagrange equations [1] are a system of second-order ordinary differential equations whose solutions are stationary points of the given action functional. The equations were discovered in the 1750s by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler and Italian mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange.
For a differential equation parameterized on time, the variable's evolution is stable if and only if the real part of each root is negative. For difference equations, there is stability if and only if the modulus of each root is less than 1. For both types of equation, persistent fluctuations occur if there is at least one pair of complex roots.
In the context of functions, the term variable refers commonly to the arguments of the functions. This is typically the case in sentences like "function of a real variable", "x is the variable of the function f: x ↦ f(x)", "f is a function of the variable x" (meaning that the argument of the function is referred to by the variable x).
Heuristically, is the change in , so we 'formally' have =, and then this is similar in form to the total differential of a function (,, …,), = = , where ,, …, are independent variables. Comparing the last two equations, the functional derivative / has a role similar to that of the partial derivative /, where the variable of integration is ...
Let y (n) (x) be the nth derivative of the unknown function y(x).Then a Cauchy–Euler equation of order n has the form () + () + + =. The substitution = (that is, = (); for <, in which one might replace all instances of by | |, extending the solution's domain to {}) can be used to reduce this equation to a linear differential equation with constant coefficients.
In mathematics and physics, Laplace's equation is a second-order partial differential equation named after Pierre-Simon Laplace, who first studied its properties.This is often written as = or =, where = = is the Laplace operator, [note 1] is the divergence operator (also symbolized "div"), is the gradient operator (also symbolized "grad"), and (,,) is a twice-differentiable real-valued function.