Q.Solve the following differential equation: .
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →The given differential equation is homogeneous, which we solve by substituting to transform it into a separable equation. The final solution is .
The given differential equation is .
Our first step in solving any differential equation is to identify its type. Let's rearrange it into the standard form :
Notice that the right-hand side, , depends only on the ratio . This is the defining characteristic of a homogeneous differential equation.
A first-order differential equation is homogeneous if can be expressed as a function of alone, i.e., .
The intuition behind solving homogeneous equations is that if the function only cares about the ratio , we can simplify the problem by introducing a new variable that is this ratio. This substitution effectively "normalizes" the variables, allowing us to separate them.
We use the substitution , where is a function of .
Differentiating with respect to using the product rule gives:
Now, we substitute and into our differential equation.
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Substitute and into the equation.
The original equation is .
Substituting :
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Separate the variables and .
First, isolate :
To combine the terms on the right, find a common denominator:
Now, we can separate the variables by moving all terms to one side with and all terms to the other side with :
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Integrate both sides.
For the left-hand side integral, let . Then, differentiating with respect to gives . This is exactly the numerator.
So, the left integral becomes:
For the right-hand side integral:
Combining these results, we get:
(where is an arbitrary constant)
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Simplify the expression and substitute back . …
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