Math Is Fun Forum

sk

Member

Registered: 2006-08-04

Posts: 19

Asymptotes help

What is an asymptote? Does the linear, quadratic, and cubic functions have asymptote? Need urgently.... pls help..

Last edited by sk (2009-03-31 18:23:44)

luca-deltodesco

Member

Registered: 2006-05-05

Posts: 1,470

Re: Asymptotes help

An asymptote is a function that approximates another function as either x or y tends to infinity (y = f(x))

linear quadratic and cubic functions to not really have asymptotes then, if you were to give them an asymptote; it would simply be the graph itself:

you can for example see in the following graph that y = 1, x = -3, x = 3 are asymptotes as at each relevent area of the graph, the graph will get closer and closer to these values, but never reach it, and as they get closer to it they start to resemble the asymptote more and more closely

http://www.mathsisfun.com/graph/function-grapher.php?func1=(x^2)/((x-3)(x+3))&func2=1&xmin=-12&xmax=12&ymin=-8&ymax=8

the asymptote need not be a straight line, for example in the following graph, the asymptotes are x = 4, x = -4 and y = 0.1x²
http://www.mathsisfun.com/graph/function-grapher.php?func1=(0.1x^2(x-4)(x+4)+1)/((x-4)(x+4))-5&func2=0.1x^2-5&xmin=-12&xmax=12&ymin=-8&ymax=8

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