10/28/2017 Differential Equations - Separable Equations

Separable Differential Equations

We are now going to start looking at nonlinear first order differential equations. The first type of nonlinear
first order differential equations that we will look at is separable differential equations.

A separable differential equation is any differential equation that we can write in the following form.
(1)

Note that in order for a differential equation to be separable all the y's in the differential equation must be
multiplied by the derivative and all the x's in the differential equation must be on the other side of the equal
sign.

Solving separable differential equation is fairly easy. We first rewrite the differential equation as the
following

Then you integrate both sides.

(2)

So, after doing the integrations in (2) you will have an implicit solution that you can hopefully solve for the
explicit solution, y(x). Note that it won't always be possible to solve for an explicit solution.

Recall from the Definitions section that an implicit solution is a solution that is not in the form
while an explicit solution has been written in that form.

We will also have to worry about the interval of validity for many of these solutions. Recall that the interval
of validity was the range of the independent variable, x in this case, on which the solution is valid. In other
words, we need to avoid division by zero, complex numbers, logarithms of negative numbers or
zero, etc. Most of the solutions that we will get from separable differential equations will not be valid for all
values of x.

Lets start things off with a fairly simple example so we can see the process without getting lost in details of
the other issues that often arise with these problems.

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