I'm a novice using Maple 16.
I'm using it mostly to check my DE homework solutions.
And it happens a lot that I get stuff like in the picture. I mean (if I'm not missing anything important) that should easly evaluate to 0. Cause the denominators are the same and the numerators both are
$$2y(x)^{3/2} x^{1/2}$$
that is - for the 1st term :
$$y(x)^2\sqrt{1/y(x)} = \sqrt{y(x)^{4-1}} = \sqrt{y(x)^3}= y(x)^{3/2}$$
and for the 2nd term :
$$y(x)\sqrt{y(x)}=y(x)^{3/2}$$
and the $2\sqrt{x}$ factor is the same .
Now my questions :
1.Assuming I'm not missing anything (it's not me, it's Maple), why is this happening - why doesn't Maple just answer 0 ?
- Any (hopefully simple) way to force it simplify such things and return 0 ?
Thank you very much !
I added more "context". It was all about solving a single order homogenous differential equation, I did the math on paper, i found the general solutions then I created both expressions on Maple and had odetest work on them in order to see if the solution is ok or not. Maple is a great software and I want to know how to use it better, that's the point of the question. I had even more complicated answers coming from odetest all reducing to 0 (after some algebraic work was invested due to the complexity of the answer). The role of the question is to find a way to see if such answers evaluate to 0 or not for all x-es in the domain ( even if this is the whole R or C ).
Normally if you put after that "simplify(%)"; you get 0.