Thursday 13 December 2012

Find the limit as n approaches infinite



We have the following function:



$$U_n = \sin \dfrac{1}{3} n \pi$$



What is the limit of this function as n approaches infinity?




I first tried to use my calculator as help, for n I chose some arbitrary large numbers, such as 100 and 1000. Then I I just took $n = 10^{50}$ and it gave me an error.



So the correct answer is it doesn't have one, but why? Why does this function have a solution for $n = 10^2, 10^3$ and not for bigger numbers such as $n=10^{50}$?


Answer



As David hinted in his comment, try using the fact that
$$
\sin(x + 2\pi k) = \sin(x)
$$
whenever $k$ is an integer. Or, if you just write out the first few values of $U_n$ (compute these using the unit circle) and you should notice a pattern.



No comments:

Post a Comment

real analysis - How to find $lim_{hrightarrow 0}frac{sin(ha)}{h}$

How to find $\lim_{h\rightarrow 0}\frac{\sin(ha)}{h}$ without lhopital rule? I know when I use lhopital I easy get $$ \lim_{h\rightarrow 0}...