Tough integration problem - complete the square, domain, absolute value, plus/minus.

57 Views Asked by At

I almost made it through a really tough integration problem, but I ended up with some extraneous +/-'s that I could only eliminate by graphing the solution. Symbolab seems to have the correct answer but IMO they're using illegal operations to get there. Here is my solution:

enter image description here

Here is my work keeping track of the domains:

enter image description here

Here is where the pesky +/-'s came in (computing $tan(arcsec(2u))$):

enter image description here

Here is Symbolab's solution:

enter image description here

And here are some of the seemingly invalid operations they used to get there:

enter image description here

I believe that, on the domain in question, $\sqrt[n]{a^n}=|a|$ because $n$ is $2$ and $tan(v)$ is not greater than $0$ on the domain $\{0<v<\frac{\pi}{2}|\frac{\pi}{2}<v<\pi\}$.