Creative Commons License Copyright © Michael Richmond. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Extra Credit Project: Equilibria of a complex function

This project may be done by individuals.

Your job in this assignment is to determine the locations of the first three equilibria of the potential energy function used in this lecture on potential energy. Here's a copy of it:

The function can be written mathematically as

Your job: find the first three positive (greater than zero) values of x for which there is an equilibrium. You must

  1. Write each value of x to four decimal places
  2. State whether each value yields a stable or unstable equilibrium

If you'd like to describe the method by which you computed these values, I'd enjoy reading about your technique.

Creative Commons License Copyright © Michael Richmond. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.