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CURVATURE OF CURVES
117

Now

,

which is positive for all the values of ; hence corresponds to a minimum.

(5) The total cost per hour of lighting a building with lamps of a certain kind is

,

where is the commercial efficiency (watts per candle),

is the candle power of each lamp,
is the average life of each lamp in hours,
cost of renewal in pence per hour of use,
cost of energy per watts per hour.

Moreover, the relation connecting the average life of a lamp with the commercial efficiency at which it is run is approximately , where and are constants depending on the kind of lamp.

Find the commercial efficiency for which the total cost of lighting will be least.

for maximum or minimum.

and .