Indefinite Integrals | Engineersphere.com

What are indefinite integrals used for?

In integral can be thought of as an area underneath a curve. Integrals are often used to manipulate position, velocity, and acceleration equations to estimate different situations. If you are given an equation that represents the velocity of a golf cart driving, like so: $y \prime = 3 x^{2} + 4 x + 3$ (the ‘ in y’ represents the differential element $\frac{d}{dy}$ that results when one performs a derivative on the position function f(x).) then you can find use an integral (Anti-Derivative) to get an expression for the position of the golf cart, y(x).

The integral of a function is represented like so: $\int_{}^{x} f(x)$ and it can be thought of as a sum of areas like so:

integral-summation

Here the integral is performed on the function $f(x)$ from point a to point b, which would make it a definite integral because the bounds are defined. Our indefinite integral is the same procedure, except missing the bounds, which makes indefinite integral operation require a little twist.

We all know that the derivative of a constant is zero. For instance, the derivative of 5 is equal to zero. Once performing this derivative, we should still be able to perform the anti-derivative on this new function (zero) to obtain the original equation (5). But how will we know what number permeates from performing an anti-derivative of zero. An indefinite integral is called indefinite because the bounds are not defined on the integration, like so: $\int_{1}^{4}$ . When we perform our indefinite integral we represent this long-lost constant by the letter ‘C’.

Before we integrate our golf cart velocity equation, lets go ahead and look at the laws of integration:

$\int_{}^{} f (x)^{n} = \frac{f(x)^{n+1}}{n+1} + C$

The integral can also be split up into separate individual integrals if there is addition in the function you are integrating.

$\int_{}^{} (5x^{2} + 3x + 4) = \int_{}^{} 5x^{2} + \int_{}^{} 3x + \int_{}^{} 4$ and whenever you add these integrals together, you only need to account for 1 of the constants (C).

So the integral of our velocity $y \prime = 3 x^{2} + 4 x + 3$ will go as follows:

$\int_{}^{} 3x^{2} + 4x + 3 = \frac{3x^{3}}{3} + \frac{4x^{2}}{2} + 3x + C$

$y(x) = \frac{3x^{3}}{3} +\frac{4x^{2}}{2} + 3x + C$

We can solve for our constant, C, if we are given initial conditions, such as the golf cart was moving at y'(0) = 1 m/s when we began collecting our data. Otherwise, we leave the integral in this form. If you would like to learn how to perform a definite integral, refer to our article on definite integrals.

What are indefinite integrals used for?

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