Implicit Derivatives

The derivative is the tool that is used to find the slope of a curve. We start by looking at the slope of a function which can be defined by the independent variable. In the case of a curve that is not explicitly defined by an independent variable we must use an implicit derivative, i.e. a derivative that will need to know the x value and the y value to compute the slope. This type of differentiation is a natural extension of the derivative of a function and we will show how to compute these implicit derivatives.