Paper 4, Section I, B

Mathematical Methods
Part IB, 2009

Describe briefly the method of Lagrange multipliers for finding the stationary points of a function f(x,y)f(x, y) subject to the constraint g(x,y)=0g(x, y)=0.

Show that at a stationary point (a,b)(a, b)

fx(a,b)gx(a,b)fy(a,b)gy(a,b)=0\left|\begin{array}{ll} \frac{\partial f}{\partial x}(a, b) & \frac{\partial g}{\partial x}(a, b) \\ \frac{\partial f}{\partial y}(a, b) & \frac{\partial g}{\partial y}(a, b) \end{array}\right|=0

Find the maximum distance from the origin to the curve

x2+y2+xy4=0.x^{2}+y^{2}+x y-4=0 .