Calculus II

Preface
Here are my online notes for my Calculus II course that I teach here at Lamar University.
Despite the fact that these are my class notes, they should be accessible to anyone wanting to
learn Calculus II or needing a refresher in some of the topics from the class.
These notes do assume that the reader has a good working knowledge of Calculus I topics
including limits, derivatives and basic integration and integration by substitution.
Calculus II tends to be a very difficult course for many students. There are many reasons for this.
The first reason is that this course does require that you have a very good working knowledge of
Calculus I. The Calculus I portion of many of the problems tends to be skipped and left to the
student to verify or fill in the details. If you dont have good Calculus I skills, and you are
constantly getting stuck on the Calculus I portion of the problem, you will find this course very
difficult to complete.
The second, and probably larger, reason many students have difficulty with Calculus II is that you
will be asked to truly think in this class. That is not meant to insult anyone; it is simply an
acknowledgment that you cant just memorize a bunch of formulas and expect to pass the course
as you can do in many math classes. There are formulas in this class that you will need to know,
but they tend to be fairly general. You will need to understand them, how they work, and more
importantly whether they can be used or not. As an example, the first topic we will look at is
Integration by Parts. The integration by parts formula is very easy to remember. However, just
because youve got it memorized doesnt mean that you can use it. Youll need to be able to look
at an integral and realize that integration by parts can be used (which isnt always obvious) and
then decide which portions of the integral correspond to the parts in the formula (again, not
always obvious).
Finally, many of the problems in this course will have multiple solution techniques and so youll
need to be able to identify all the possible techniques and then decide which will be the easiest
technique to use.
So, with all that out of the way let me also get a couple of warnings out of the way to my students
who may be here to get a copy of what happened on a day that you missed.
1. Because I wanted to make this a fairly complete set of notes for anyone wanting to learn
calculus I have included some material that I do not usually have time to cover in class
and because this changes from semester to semester it is not noted here. You will need to
find one of your fellow class mates to see if there is something in these notes that wasnt
covered in class.
2. In general I try to work problems in class that are different from my notes. However,
with Calculus II many of the problems are difficult to make up on the spur of the moment
and so in this class my class work will follow these notes fairly close as far as worked
problems go. With that being said I will, on occasion, work problems off the top of my
head when I can to provide more examples than just those in my notes. Also, I often
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Calculus II

dont have time in class to work all of the problems in the notes and so you will find that
some sections contain problems that werent worked in class due to time restrictions.
3. Sometimes questions in class will lead down paths that are not covered here. I try to
anticipate as many of the questions as possible in writing these up, but the reality is that I
cant anticipate all the questions. Sometimes a very good question gets asked in class
that leads to insights that Ive not included here. You should always talk to someone who
was in class on the day you missed and compare these notes to their notes and see what
the differences are.
4. This is somewhat related to the previous three items, but is important enough to merit its
own item. THESE NOTES ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR ATTENDING CLASS!!
Using these notes as a substitute for class is liable to get you in trouble. As already noted
not everything in these notes is covered in class and often material or insights not in these
notes is covered in class.

2007 Paul Dawkins

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Calculus II

Vectors The Basics

Lets start this section off with a quick discussion on what vectors are used for. Vectors are used
to represent quantities that have both a magnitude and a direction. Good examples of quantities
that can be represented by vectors are force and velocity. Both of these have a direction and a
magnitude.
Lets consider force for a second. A force of say 5 Newtons that is applied in a particular
direction can be applied at any point in space. In other words, the point where we apply the force
does not change the force itself. Forces are independent of the point of application. To define a
force all we need to know is the magnitude of the force and the direction that the force is applied
in.
The same idea holds more generally with vectors. Vectors only impart magnitude and direction.
They dont impart any information about where the quantity is applied. This is an important idea
to always remember in the study of vectors.
In a graphical sense vectors are represented by directed line segments. The length of the line
segment is the magnitude of the vector and the direction of the line segment is the direction of the
vector. However, because vectors dont impart any information about where the quantity is
applied any directed line segment with the same length and direction will represent the same
vector.
Consider the sketch below.

Each of the directed line segments in the sketch represents the same vector. In each case the
vector starts at a specific point then moves 2 units to the left and 5 units up. The notation that
well use for this vector is,

r
v = -2,5

and each of the directed line segments in the sketch are called representations of the vector.
Be careful to distinguish vector notation, -2,5 , from the notation we use to represent
coordinates of points, ( -2,5 ) . The vector denotes a magnitude and a direction of a quantity
while the point denotes a location in space. So dont mix the notations up!
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Calculus II

A representation of the vector v = a1 , a2 in two dimensional space is any directed line segment,

uuur
AB , from the point A = ( x, y ) to the point B = ( x + a1 , y + a2 ) . Likewise a representation of
uuur
r
the vector v = a1 , a2 , a3 in three dimensional space is any directed line segment, AB , from the

point A = ( x, y, z ) to the point B = ( x + a1 , y + a2 , z + a3 ) .

Note that there is very little difference between the two dimensional and three dimensional
formulas above. To get from the three dimensional formula to the two dimensional formula all
we did is take out the third component/coordinate. Because of this most of the formulas here are
given only in their three dimensional version. If we need them in their two dimensional form we
can easily modify the three dimensional form.
There is one representation of a vector that is special in some way. The representation of the
r
vector v = a1 , a2 , a3 that starts at the point A = ( 0, 0, 0 ) and ends at the point B = ( a1 , a2 , a3 )
is called the position vector of the point ( a1 , a2 , a3 ) . So, when we talk about position vectors
we are specifying the initial and final point of the vector.
Position vectors are useful if we ever need to represent a point as a vector. As well see there are
times in which we definitely are going to want to represent points as vectors. In fact, were going
to run into topics that can only be done if we represent points as vectors.
Next we need to discuss briefly how to generate a vector given the initial and final points of the
representation. Given the two points A = ( a1 , a2 , a3 ) and B = ( b1 , b2 , b3 ) the vector with the

uuur

representation AB is,

r
v = b1 - a1 , b2 - a2 , b3 - a3

Note that we have to be very careful with direction here. The vector above is the vector that starts
uuur
at A and ends at B. The vector that starts at B and ends at A, i.e. with representation BA is,

r
w = a1 - b1 , a2 - b2 , a3 - b3

These two vectors are different and so we do need to always pay attention to what point is the
starting point and what point is the ending point. When determining the vector between two
points we always subtract the initial point from the terminal point.

Example 1 Give the vector for each of the following.

(a) The vector from ( 2, -7, 0 ) to (1, -3, -5 ) .
(b) The vector from (1, -3, -5 ) to ( 2, -7, 0 ) .
(c) The position vector for ( -90, 4 )
Solution
(a) Remember that to construct this vector we subtract coordinates of the starting point from the
ending point.
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Calculus II

1 - 2, -3 - ( -7 ) , -5 - 0 = -1, 4, -5
(b) Same thing here.

2 - 1, -7 - ( -3) , 0 - ( -5 ) = 1, -4,5

Notice that the only difference between the first two is the signs are all opposite. This difference
is important as it is this difference that tells us that the two vectors point in opposite directions.
(c) Not much to this one other than acknowledging that the position vector of a point is nothing
more than a vector with the points coordinates as its components.

-90, 4
We now need to start discussing some of the basic concepts that we will run into on occasion.
Magnitude
r
The magnitude, or length, of the vector v = a1 , a2 , a3 is given by,

v = a12 + a22 + a32

Example 2 Determine the magnitude of each of the following vectors.
r
(a) a = 3, -5,10
r

1
2
,5
5
r
(c) w = 0, 0
r
(d) i = 1, 0, 0
(b) u =

Solution
There isnt too much to these other than plug into the formula.

(b) u =

(d) i = 1 + 0 + 0 = 1

(a) a = 9 + 25 + 100 = 134

1 4
+ = 1 =1
5 5

(c) w = 0 + 0 = 0
We also have the following fact about the magnitude.

r
r r
If a = 0 then a = 0

This should make sense. Because we square all the components the only way we can get zero out
of the formula was for the components to be zero in the first place.
Unit Vector
r
Any vector with magnitude of 1, i.e. u = 1 , is called a unit vector.

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Calculus II

Example 3 Which of the vectors from Example 2 are unit vectors?

Solution
Both the second and fourth vectors had a length of 1 and so they are the only unit vectors from
the first example.
Zero Vector
r
The vector w = 0, 0 that we saw in the first example is called a zero vector since its

components are all zero. Zero vectors are often denoted by 0 . Be careful to distinguish 0 (the

number) from 0 (the vector). The number 0 denotes the origin in space, while the vector 0
denotes a vector that has no magnitude or direction.
Standard Basis Vectors
r
The fourth vector from the second example, i = 1, 0, 0 , is called a standard basis vector. In
three dimensional space there are three standard basis vectors,

r
i = 1, 0, 0

r
j = 0,1, 0

r
k = 0, 0,1

In two dimensional space there are two standard basis vectors,

r
i = 1, 0

r
j = 0,1

Note that standard basis vectors are also unit vectors.

Warning
We are pretty much done with this section however, before proceeding to the next section we
should point out that vectors are not restricted to two dimensional or three dimensional space.
Vectors can exist in general n-dimensional space. The general notation for a n-dimensional
vector is,

r
v = a1 , a2 , a3 ,K , an

and each of the ais are called components of the vector.

Because we will be working almost exclusively with two and three dimensional vectors in this
course most of the formulas will be given for the two and/or three dimensional cases. However,
most of the concepts/formulas will work with general vectors and the formulas are easily (and
naturally) modified for general n-dimensional vectors. Also, because it is easier to visualize
things in two dimensions most of the figures related to vectors will be two dimensional figures.
So, we need to be careful to not get too locked into the two or three dimensional cases from our
discussions in this chapter. We will be working in these dimensions either because its easier to
visualize the situation or because physical restrictions of the problems will enforce a dimension
upon us.

2007 Paul Dawkins

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