Looking around in your own country, discuss two practical applications in which “piecewise functions” are used either explicitly or implicitly

Piecewise functions are functions that behave differently in different regions of the domain.

One example that you may see in your city is the case of the street illumination, such that can be modeled as:

x = time

Suppose that the lights are turned on at a given hour x0 and then turn off at the hour x1, we can define:

f(x) = 0 if x1 < x < x0

f(x) = 1 if x0 ≤ x ≤ x1

Where f(x) represents the intensity of the light at the time x.

Between x1 and x0, the lights are not working, so the illumination that they provide is zero.

Between x0 and x1 the lights are turned on, so the illumination is 1.

Another example can be the accurate description of the velocity of a car as a function of time.

For some pieces, the car will be stopped (maybe in a red light)

For some pieces, the car will be moving slow (maybe there is a lot of traffic)

For some pieces, the car will be moving fast or accelerating (in an empty street).

So we can define this motion as a piecewise function that obviously will depend on how the car moves.