9/17/2017 Differential Equations - Reduction of Order

Example 2 Find the general solution to

given that is a solution.

Solution
The form for the second solution as well as its derivatives are,

Plugging these into the differential equation gives,

Rearranging and simplifying gives the differential equation that well need to solve in order to determine the
correct v that well need for the second solution.

Next use the variable transformation as we did in the previous example.

With this change of variable the differential equation becomes

and this is a linear, first order differential equation that we can solve. Well leave the details of the solution
process to you.

Now solve for v(t).

As with the first example well drop the constants and use the following v(t)

Then general solution will then be,

http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/DE/ReductionofOrder.aspx 1/1