Thank you for these solutions to Pierce fromTarbert Comprehensive School;
Hyeyoun
from St Paul's Girls' School, London; Dorothy
from Madras College, St Andrew's, Scotland and
Yatir from Israel.
The graph of the cubic
has
rotational symmetry about the point
and
using the translation
the
function in the new coordinates becomes
which is symmetric about the origin.
The graph of the cubic
has
rotational symmetry about the point of inflection
(-1/2, 2) and using the translation
the function in the new coordinates
becomes
which is symmetric about
the origin.
A NON CALCULUS METHOD FROM PIERCE
In this proof I will show that all cubic
polynomials are rotationally symmetric. Firstly,
I'll discuss some transformations in the plane.
Suppose we are given the graph of the cubic
polynomial
. What
kind of transformations can we perform on it that
do not alter the shape of the graph?
Firstly, consider the transformation
which
maps
onto
, for some
constant real number
. This function has the
effect of moving the entire graph either up or
down in the plane, depending on whether
is
positive or negative, without changing the shape
of the graph.
Secondly, consider the transformation
which
maps
onto
for some
constant real number
. This has the effect of
moving the graph of the cubic either left or
right in the co-ordinate plane, depending on
whether
is positive or negative, again
without changing the shape of the graph.
What use are these transformations? The answer
lies in the fact that if a function satisfies the
equation
then it is rotationally
symmetric about the origin (with an angle of
rotation equal to pi radians.)
In the above general equation of the cubic
We can see that if the
and
terms
weren't there, then the cubic would satisfy the
equation
and so the graph would be
rotationally symmetric. Is there any way to get
rid of these terms by transformations which do
not alter the shape of the graph? The answer is
that there is using the two transformations
and
which I outlined at the start.
Firstly, we can get rid of the
term as
follows. Consider the transformation
We can choose
so that the co-efficient of
is zero i.e
which implies
that
. So by applying the
transformation
with
i.e by
shifting the graph in the right/left direction in
the plane by
units we have removed
the
term.
Now by applying the transformation
to this
new curve with
we can remove
the
term.
The overall translation may be defined as
follows: Map
onto
where
. After this
translation what is the equation of the graph?
The equation is
where
. This curve, g(x), is exactly the
same shape as the original graph (since it was
derived from transformations which did not alter
the shape of the graph).
therefore
and the graph is
rotationally symmetric so the original graph was
also rotationally symmetric.
It is interesting to note that since we have
effectively moved the graph back
units
and down
units, and the origin
is now our centre of rotation, the original
centre of rotation must have been at
.
A SOLUTION USING CALCULUS FROM YATIR:
If the graph of a cubic function has a rotational
symmetry, then after the rotation the minimum
becomes that maximum and vice versa.
In that case the point-of-symmetry must be the
midpoint between the minimum and the maximum. I
will prove that this point is also the point of
inflection, and if the function doesn't have a
maximum and minimum then this point will serve as
the point-of-symmetry.
First, to find the point:
When
we have
so the
turning points are given by:
The midpoint between the turning points is given
by :
The point of inflection of the function is a
point at when the second derivative
is zero which happens when
which is
exactly the same point.
Once that we have found our potential point, lets
prove that it acts as point of symmetry of
rotation.
In order to do that, we'll have to translate the
graph of the function until its point-of-symmetry
is the origin (or move the axes until the origin
becomes
). Then if
it is the point of symmetry because
a function has rotational symmetry around the
origin if
.
Lets call the new axes
and
(instead of of
and
. Our original function was
The transformation formulas are:
Let's plug them in (1) to get:
After simplifications we get:
The graph of this function has rotational
symmetry about the origin because
and hence the general cubic polynomial has
rotational symmetry. (Notice that the constant
term turns out to be zero because our new
function passes through the origin.)