Wednesday 27 April 2016

calculus - Nonsensical result in the midst of calculating an integral via substitution.




I was just calculating an integral via a trigonometric substitution and ended up with $\color{red}{ \text{something pretty nonsensical} }$ but $\color{blue}{ \text{reversing the substitution} }$ seemed to clean it up.
$$\begin{aligned} \int_{0}^{\frac{\pi}{2}} \dfrac{\text{d}\theta}{3+5\cos \theta} \ & \overset{t=\tan \frac{\theta}{2}}= \ \dfrac{1}{4} \color{red}{ \log \left| \dfrac{2+t}{2-t} \right| \Bigg|}_{\color{red}{0}}^{ \color{purple}{\infty }} \\ & \ \ = \dfrac{1}{4} \color{blue}{ \log \left| \dfrac{2+\tan\frac{\theta}{2}}{2-\tan\frac{\theta}{2}} \right| \Bigg|_{0}^{\frac{\pi}{2}} } \end{aligned}$$
Why is that the case? Is it something to do with the nature of the substitution?
Is there something I'm not considering when performing the substitution?



Any help would be much appreciated.



Thank you.




Edit: It turns out that $\color{purple}{\tan\frac{\pi}{4} =1}$. Problem solved!


Answer



When $\theta$ goes from $0$ to $\frac{\pi}2$, $\frac{\theta}2$ goes from $0$ to $\frac{\pi}4$ so $\tan\frac{\theta}2$ goes from $0$ t0 $1$, not $0$ to $\infty$.


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