I am on a team which is writing a set of lecture notes for differential calculus.
I am using a format of "Break ground" which poses a problem, "Dig in" which develops the tools to solve the problem, and "Reinforce" which practices using the tools we just developed.
While using an abstract mathematical problem for the "Break ground" section is fine, some people on my team would rather that this problem be a "real application" whenever possible.
We have been trying to find such an example for l'Hôpital's rule for a while, but we have run into the following roadblocks:
Simple l'Hôpital's rule problems (which require only one differentiation) can seemingly all be solved by appealing to the definition of the derivative. So it is only when we apply l'Hôpital's rule twice that the method seems "necessary". However, such a problem seems too complicated for a "first brush" with l'Hôpital.
We have two "real world" examples of l'Hopital in action.
a. One in deriving continuous interest as a limit of discretely compounded interest. This is, perhaps, better done using the definition of the exponential function.
b. The other involves taking the limit of the velocity function of a falling object with air resistance, as air resistance goes to $0$. This is a great example, but there are at least two essential variables (time after the fall $t$, and the coefficient of air resistance $k$). The presence of more than one variable could be confusing (especially when you are thinking of velocity as a function of time, but then taking the limit with respect to $k$).
Does anyone have an example of l'Hopital's rule for which it is both necessary (or at least convenient), relatively straight forward , and is a "real world application"?
If no one can come up with something meeting all 3 requirements, I will probably settle for using the "abstract" problem
$$ \lim_{x \to 1} \frac{x^4-2x+1}{4x^4-15x+11} $$
and then motivate the idea of the rule by "zooming in" on the point $(1,0)$ (play with this graph), and welcoming the students to try to approximate the limit by the ratio of the tangent line approximations at $x=1$.