Rational request
Can you make a curve to match my friend's requirements?
Problem
For a secret reason, my friend wants a curve which has 4 vertical asymptotes and 3 turning points.
Could you sketch him such a curve? Could you find an algebraic form for such a curve? Could you find many different curves with such properties?
My other friend wants a curve which also has 4 vertical asymptotes, but only 2 turning points. Can her needs be met algebraically?
As you consider this problem, many questions might emerge in your mind such as: "what makes one type of curve 'the same' as or 'different' from another?" or "can I satisfy requests for other numbers of asymptotes and turning points?". Why not make a note of these questions and ask your teacher, yourself or your friends to try to solve them?
Student Solutions
Steve said the following
I sketched four vertical asymptotes and a sketch showed that a function which decayed to zero from above at $x \rightarrow \pm \infty$ could have the right sorts of properties.
To get the right asymptotes and behaviour at $\pm \infty$ I guessed the following curve, choosing to make it symmetric about the origin for simplicity
$$
y = \frac{1}{(x-2)(x-1)(x+1)(x+2)}
$$
This worked: it has a turning point at $x$ between $-2$ and $-1$ another turning point at $x$ between $1$ and $2$ and a turning point at $x=0$.
The plot of this from graphmatica is as follows
It seems likely that many such curves, with differing constants, would also give the correct behaviour. To see why, upon differentiation, I get a cubic polynomial divided by another polynomial. For zeros the numerator would need to be zero and a cubic can have three real roots. I could choose the constants to have the correct number of real roots.
I then considered the second request. Initially, I thought that this seemed impossible, but then started to work through the possibilities for asymptotes. By turning the middle turning point into a point of inflection I would have a graph with the correct behaviour.
I wondered how to convert the behaviour of the central turning point and decided that the curve needed to be forced to pass through the origin and also to be antisymmetric. I therefore multiplied the expression by $x$, realising that this wouldn't affect the 'topological' behaviour at the other turning points. A plot of the curve
$$
y = \frac{x}{(x-2)(x-1)(x+1)(x+2)}
$$
gave graph
Which has the correct behaviour.