MAT 135 – Calculus

Take-Home Assessment 3
30 points; due at 6:00 PM on Tuesday, 23 June 2009

Reminders:
• This and all Take-Home Assessments are to be completely individually. As stated in the syllabus
policy on academic honesty, any collaboration with others on this assignment must take place only in
the initial stages of the work. All substantive work on solutions must be your own, and you may be
subject to a random oral examination on your work if it doesnt appear that you have done the work
to the point that you understand it.
• You may use technology on this assignment; indeed some questions below require the use of technology.
But you must always show a completed solution for each problem unless it says to state an answer.
• You may hand-write your mathematical work, but a typed-up version is preferred. If you hand-write
your work, make it neat, organized, and easy to read, and leave all margins empty for comments. You
may lose points if you do not do these things.
• For all work requiring technology (i.e. Winplot or Excel work), please hand in a printout of your work
AND email the corresponding file to the professor.

√
1. [6 points] Use the limit-based definition of the derivative to calculate the derivative of y = x.
Do NOT use any derivative rules developed in Chapter 3. (Hint: The answer, as indicated
1
in an example in class, is y 0 = √ .)
2 x
2. [10 points] A home builder began construction of the first house in a new subdivision 15
months ago. Since then, the number of houses built in the subdivision has grown according
to this graph:

350

320
300
280
260
240
220
Number of homes

200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Time (months)

This is an example of what’s called logistic growth, characterized by slow growth in the
beginning that reaches a very rapid pace and then slows down. Logistic growth models the

1
 real-life behavior of many things, particularly populations in restricted environments – such
as homeowners in a subdivision with only a limited number of home sites available. Using this
graph, particularly the grid markings, and some hand-drawn tangent lines, make an accurate
sketch of the derivative of this function. Show all work you use in making the graph. Then,
write a 3-5 page informative paragraph aimed at a typical home-buying family (who do not
know calculus) that uses the derivative to address the following questions:

• How has the builder’s activity changed over the last 15 months?
• When was the builder the busiest? And how do you know that?
• Can the family expect a lot of construction traffic through their neighborhood in the
coming months after they move in?

3. In Take-Home Assessment 1, you looked at some data for an airplane’s altitude (a, in feet) as
a function of time (t, in minutes) during the first 30 minutes of its flight. Please refer to the
table found on the handout for that Assessment (posted on Angel if you don’t have a paper
copy any more).

(a) [4 points] What was the average rate of change in the airplane’s altitude from 10 minutes
into the flight to 20 minutes into the flight? What was the average rate of change in the
airplane’s altitude from 7 minutes to 10 minutes?
(b) [6 points] Suppose we wanted to find the value of a0 (10), the derivative of the altitude
function at time t = 10. State the units of measurement of this quantity. Then, explain
why we cannot compute this value exactly; and then devise a plan for how you might
use the previous part of this question to approximate the value of a0 (10).
(c) [4 points] Use your answer from the previous part of this question and an Excel spread-
sheet to construct a table for a0 (t), the derivative of the altitude function. Make sure to
explain how you got your table entries.