Why Does the Official Key State X=2.05 Instead of X=1 in This Adiabatic Process?

[Twigg]

Sorry, you lost me on this. I think we're talking about different things. X can't be 1/a + 1.05 because 1/a has units of inverse meters?

 

[Delta2]

The sum of the coefficients of the first and second term is 2.05, but yes we can't add the coefficients together, they don't have common factor.

 

[Chestermiller]

why are we adding these terms when a is a infinitesimal quantity

We are expanding the exact expression for the work in a Taylor series to 2nd order terms in a/R. So the result is not exact; we are retaining only the first 3 terms of the expansion.