VietDao29 said:
There's one small error in your work: you assume that the limit does exist to apply L'Hopital's Rule, while the fact that this limit does exist, or not, is still unknown.
Well, you can look at the use of l'Hospital's Rule as a heuristic guide. It
does give a correct solution if we make the assumption that a finite limit exists. For those that require a rigorous proof, one can then go ahead and construct an epsilon-delta proof by using these identities:
<br />
\left\vert \frac{x}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1}} - 1 \right\vert = \left\vert \frac{x - \sqrt{x^2 + 1}}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1}} \right\vert = \left\vert \frac{x - \sqrt{x^2 + 1}}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1}} \cdot \frac{x + \sqrt{x^2 + 1}}{x + \sqrt{x^2 + 1}} \right\vert = \left\vert \frac{x^2 - x^2 - 1}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1} \left( x + \sqrt{x^2 + 1} \right)} \right\vert<br />
<br />
\frac{1}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1} \left \vert x + \sqrt{x^2 + 1} \right \vert} = \frac{1}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1} \left( x + \sqrt{x^2 + 1} \right)}<br />
Next, we notice that \sqrt{x^2 + 1} and x + \sqrt{x^2 + 1} are both monotonically increasing, and the following inequality:
<br />
\sqrt{x^2 + 1} > |x|, \forall x<br />
holds (the graph of the hyperbola lies above its asymptotes). For x > M > 0, we have the following series of inequalities:
<br />
\sqrt{x^2 + 1} \left( x + \sqrt{x^2 + 1} \right) > \sqrt{M^2 + 1} \left( M + \sqrt{M^2 + 1} \right) > M (M + M) > 2 M^2<br />
For any given \epsilon > 0, we can find such an M > M_{0} > 0, so that:
<br />
2 M^2_0 = \frac{1}{\epsilon}<br />
<br />
M_0 = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2 \epsilon}}<br />
<br />
\left( \forall \epsilon > 0 \right) \left(\exists M_0(\epsilon) > 0 \right) \left( \forall x > M > M_{0} \right) \left\vert \frac{x}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1}} - 1 \right \vert \equiv \frac{1}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1} \left( x + \sqrt{x^2 + 1} \right) } < \epsilon<br />
Thus, we had constructed a proof that:
<br />
\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}{\frac{x}{\sqrt{x^2 + 1}}} = 1<br />