The problem (from Larson’s Calculus, an Applied Approach, 10’th edition, Section 7.8, no. 18 in my paperback edition, no. 17 in the e-book edition) does not seem that unusual at a very quick glance:
if you have a hard time reading the image. AND, *if* you just blindly do the formal calculations:
which is what the text has as “the answer.”
But come on. We took a function that was negative in the first quadrant, integrated it entirely in the first quadrant (in standard order) and ended up with a positive number??? I don’t think so!
Indeed, if we perform which is far more believable.
So, we KNOW something is wrong. Now let’s attempt to sketch the region first:
Oops! Note: if we just used the quarter circle boundary we obtain
The 3-dimensional situation: we are limited by the graph of the function, the cylinder and the planes ; the plane is outside of this cylinder. (from here: the red is the graph of
Now think about what the “formal calculation” really calculated and wonder if it was just a coincidence that we got the absolute value of the integral taken over the rectangle