Week 002 Calculus I - Exponential Functions
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GENERAL NOTICE
I apologize for the outage on the site yesterday and today. Lamar University is in Beaumont
Texas and Hurricane Laura came through here and caused a brief power outage at Lamar.
Things should be up and running at this point and (hopefully) will stay that way, at least until
the next hurricane comes through here which seems to happen about once every 10-15
years. Note that I wouldn't be too suprised if there are brief outages over the next couple of
days as they work to get everything back up and running properly. I apologize for the
inconvienence.
Paul
August 27, 2020
Section 1-7 : Exponential Functions
In this section we’re going to review one of the more common functions in both calculus and the
sciences. However, before getting to this function let’s take a much more general approach to
things.
Let’s start with b ,
> 0 b ≠ 1 . An exponential function is then a function in the form,
x
f (x) = b
Note that we avoid b = 1 because that would give the constant function, f (x) = 1. We avoid
b = 0 since this would also give a constant function and we avoid negative values of b for the
following reason.
Let’s, for a second, suppose that we did allow b to be negative and look at the following function.
x
g (x) = (−4)
Let’s do some evaluation.
2 1 1
2
g (2) = (−4) = 16 g( ) = (−4) = √−4 = 2i
2
So, for some values of x we will get real numbers and for other values of x we will get complex
numbers. We want to avoid this so if we require b > 0 this will not be a problem.
Let’s take a look at a couple of exponential functions.
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9/4/2020 Calculus I - Exponential Functions
x
1
Example 1 Sketch the graph of f (x) = 2
x
and g (x) = ( ) .
2
Show Solution
This graph illustrates some very nice properties about exponential functions in general.
Properties of f (x) = b
x
1. f (0) = 1. The function will always take the value of 1 at x = 0.
2. f (x) ≠ 0. An exponential function will never be zero.
3. f (x) > 0. An exponential function is always positive.
4. The previous two properties can be summarized by saying that the range of an exponential
function is(0, ∞).
5. The domain of an exponential function is(−∞, ∞). In other words, you can plug every x
into an exponential function.
6. If 0 < b < 1 then,
a. f (x) → 0 as x → ∞
b. f (x) → ∞ as x → −∞
7. If b > 1 then,
a. f (x) → ∞ as x → ∞
b. f (x) → 0 as x → −∞
These will all be very useful properties to recall at times as we move throughout this course (and
later Calculus courses for that matter…).
There is a very important exponential function that arises naturally in many places. This function
is called the natural exponential function. However, for most people, this is simply the
exponential function.
Definition : The natural exponential function is f (x) = e
x
where,
e = 2.71828182845905 ….
So, since e > 1 we also know that ex → ∞ as x → ∞ and ex → 0 as x → −∞ .
Let’s take a quick look at an example.
Example 2 Sketch the graph of h (t) .
1−
= 1 − 5e 2
Show Solution
The main point behind this problem is to make sure you can do this type of evaluation so make
sure that you can get the values that we graphed in this example. You will be asked to do this
kind of evaluation on occasion in this class.
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9/4/2020 Calculus I - Exponential Functions
You will be seeing exponential functions in pretty much every chapter in this class so make sure
that you are comfortable with them.
© 2003 - 2020 Paul Dawkins Page Last Modified : 5/29/2018
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