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Chain Rule: Quantity raised to a power

 The Chain Rule can be applied to find the derivative of a function such as

That is because this function can be considered (from the outside working in) as a quantity raised
to the -7th power. Frequently, it helps to temporarily define a variable, u, to represent the quantity.

Then  

Then the function can be written as

 , and the task of finding its derivative with respect to x becomes

 .

The first stage, finding can be handled with the Power Rule:

=

 In order to go further, we need to replace u with its equivalent:

We can complete the problem by differentiating the remaining terms to get

 

 Test Problem: Find the derivative of

a)
b)
c)
d)
e)

General Contents

Detailed Contents

Index