Unit 5 - Objective 1 - Antiderivatives

Now that you can take derivatives of polynomial functions, we are going to reverse the process. It is called finding the antiderivative (similar to the expression for undoing a logarithm by finding an antilogarithm).

This section gives only an intuitive idea. We will develop some rules in the next section. Finding an antiderivative here is a trial/guess process. We will take the derivative of your guess to see if you guessed right.

In finding derivatives, the exponent was decreased by 1 so increasing the exponent by 1 should help reverse the process.

Try it!

Find the antiderivative of 4 (5x +3)³

This is not quite the same. The guess gave 20, we only wanted 4.

Lets try 1/5 of our guess this time.