The Elegance of the Indeterminate Form
Welcome, fellow traveler on the path to JEE mastery. Today, we are going to dissect a problem that, at first glance, might look like a daunting wall of calculus. We are tasked with evaluating the limit:
x→0limx448∫0xt6+1t3dt
Take a deep breath. I know that integral looks intimidating. It sits there, nested inside a fraction, waiting to confuse us. But in the world of competitive mathematics, complexity is often just a mask for a very simple, elegant truth. Let us peel back that mask together.
Step 1
The Diagnostic Check
Before we charge into battle, we must perform a diagnostic. As x→0, the denominator x4 clearly heads toward 0.
The numerator, represented by the integral ∫0xt6+1t3dt, represents the area under a curve from 0 to x. As x shrinks to 0, the interval of integration vanishes, and the area becomes 0.
We have arrived at the classic 00 indeterminate form. This is our green light—our signal that L'Hopital's Rule is the key to unlocking this puzzle.
Step 2
The Power of Leibniz
Now, we need to differentiate the numerator. We use the Newton-Leibniz Rule, which states that the derivative of an integral with respect to its upper limit is simply the integrand evaluated at that limit.
Mathematically, we have:
dxd∫0xt6+1t3dt=x6+1x3
It is almost poetic; the integral sign and the derivative sign essentially 'cancel' each other out. We multiply this by our constant 48, and our numerator derivative becomes x6+148x3.
Step 3
The Dance of Cancellation
Now, let us look at the denominator. The derivative of x4 is a simple application of the power rule: 4x3.
Putting it all together, our limit transforms into:
Look closely at this expression. The x3 term is present in both the numerator and the denominator. By canceling the x3 terms, the 'undefined' nature of the limit evaporates. We are left with:
The Final Victory
We are in the home stretch. We simplify the constants: 448=12.
Now, we simply evaluate the limit as x→0. Substituting x=0 into our remaining expression, we get:
And there it is. The complexity has collapsed into a single, clean integer. The final answer is 12.