A Converging Geometric Series

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This Demonstration shows that .
Contributed by: Akane Hattori and Natsuki Okuda (June 2013)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
Snapshot 1: when , the area is filled is
Snapshot 2: when , a square with area
is added
Snapshot 3: where and the area filled is very close to 1
The geometric series converges if and only if
, and then the sum of the series is
. Convergence of
can be proven by the integral test, which states that if
is continuous, decreasing, and positive, then
converges if
converges. In this case,
, so the integral converges and therefore the geometric series also converges.
Special thanks to the University of Illinois NetMath Program and the mathematics department at William Fremd High School.
References
[1] R. Bayer. "Proof By Picture." (Aug. 13, 2009) www.scribd.com/doc/254948592/Proof-by-Picture.
[2] M. Moody. "Convergence Tests for Infinite Series." (Jun 18, 2013) www.math.hmc.edu/calculus/tutorials/convergence.
Permanent Citation