Page 19 of Gelfand and Fomin's Calculus of Variations considers the Euler equation arising from functionals of the form ∫baf(x,y)√1+y′2dy. Letting the integrand be F, they give the ddxFy′ term of the Euler equation as ddx[f(x,y)y′√1+y′2]=fxy′√1+y′2+fyy′2√1+y′2+fy″(1+y′2)3/2.
(Subscripts are Gelfand and Fomin's notation for partial derivatives.) This formula should stem from the product rule for derivatives, so to my understanding, the second and third terms should be f times the derivative of y′√1+y′2; that is, they should be fddxy′√1+y′2=fy′2√1+y′2+fy″(1+y′2)3/2.
So why do Gelfand and Fomin give fy (which is certainly not a typo) rather than f as the coefficient of y′2√1+y′2? There's no derivative with respect to y anywhere in the setup, so I don't see how any could arise in the answer.
Answer
Actually only the last term comes from
fddxy′√1+y′2=(y″√1+y′2−y′y′y″(1+y′2)3/2)f=y″(1+y′2)3/2f.
The first two terms are from the total derivative of f, namely
dfdx=∂f∂x+∂f∂ydydx=fx+y′fy
by the multivariate chain rule.
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