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Pure · Integration

Chapter 1 · 3

The idea

Integrating with trigonometric identities

Integrals like sin²x, cos²x and tan²x that have no direct rule — rewritten with the double-angle and Pythagorean identities into things you can integrate term by term.

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Pure · Integration

Integrating with trigonometric identities

Integrals like sin²x, cos²x and tan²x that have no direct rule — rewritten with the double-angle and Pythagorean identities into things you can integrate term by term.

Why it works

No table entry for sin²

Find ∫sin⁡2x dx\displaystyle\int \sin^2 x\,dx. There is no entry in the integral table for sin⁡2x\sin^2 x, and the tempting guess fails: the answer is not 13sin⁡3x\tfrac13\sin^3 x, because differentiating that gives sin⁡2xcos⁡x\sin^2 x\cos x — the chain rule leaves a cos⁡x\cos x the guess forgot. Nothing in the table will ever match a squared trig function directly. The way through — and the whole method of this lesson — is to rewrite the integrand with a trig identity until every term is something the table does contain. By the end of the next section, the opening integral will be two lines long.

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