Section 2.5 : Computing Limits
15. Use the Squeeze Theorem to determine the value of lim.
We first need to determine lower/upper functions. We’ll start off by acknowledging that provided x \ne 0 (which we know it won’t be because we are looking at the limit asx \to 0) we will have,
- 1 \le \sin \left( {\frac{\pi }{x}} \right) \le 1Now, simply multiply through this by {x^4} to get,
- {x^4} \le {x^4}\sin \left( {\frac{\pi }{x}} \right) \le {x^4}Before proceeding note that we can only do this because we know that {x^4} > 0 for x \ne 0. Recall that if we multiply through an inequality by a negative number we would have had to switch the signs. So, for instance, had we multiplied through by {x^3} we would have had issues because this is positive if x > 0 and negative if x < 0.
Now, let’s get back to the problem. We have a set of lower/upper functions and clearly,
\mathop {\lim }\limits_{x \to 0} {x^4} = \mathop {\lim }\limits_{x \to 0} \left( { - {x^4}} \right) = 0Therefore, by the Squeeze Theorem we must have,
\mathop {\lim }\limits_{x \to 0} {x^4}\sin \left( {\frac{\pi }{x}} \right) = 0