Question

How do you find the instantaneous velocity of y at the specified value of x (given a table)?

Answer 1

find the derivative of the position function at that value of x.

Answer 2

Hard to write in the value
so here it goes
the x values are 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2, 1.4
the y values are 0, 0.02, 0.08, 0.18, 0.32, 0.5, 0.72, 0.98

Answer 3

do you know if y(x) is a polynomial ?

Answer 4

no, I was just given the table (no other information)

Answer 5

What does x denote? Distance? Time?

Answer 6

And there must be some information somewhere you might be missing. Or implicit in previous questions, examples. It might be good to give us some context.

Answer 7

Let me type the actual instructions:
Use the table to find the instantaneous velocity of y at the specified value of x.
x=1 table given

Answer 8

solution is 1 but I don't see it other than the table is approaching 1

Answer 9

So it doesn't say what x and y mean? It says the instantaneous velocity of y, is y an object, is it the series of numbers? It's really unclear.

Answer 10

It was a problem given as a semester exam review. I got confused by the instructions myself. I will have to go read up on this topic.... Thanks

Answer 11

i think , y is the distance and x is the time

take 2 points equidistant from x= 1
say x = 0.8 and x = 1.2
finding the derivative at a point is same as finding the slope of curve at that point

so find the slope using these 2 points
0.8,0.32 and 1.2,0.72

Answer 12

y is the distance and x is the time <<<<<< then dy/dx gives velocity

Answer 13

just make sure you take equidistant points,
so you can also choose this pair
0.6,0.18 and 1.4, 0.98

Answer 14

ok thanks

Answer 15

Got it, now I see how to do these types of problems. Thanks for the great explanation.

Answer 16

welcome ^_^