Reducing \(y''=F(x,y,y')\) to first order. (Q1811598)

The authors study the second-order ODE (1) \(y'' = F(x, y, y')\). They show that by the transformations \(\bar x = \phi (x)\), \(\bar y = \psi (x, y)\), equation (1) can be reduced to a first-order equation of the form \(z' = f(\bar x, z),\) where \(z=\frac{d\bar y}{d \bar x}, z' = \frac{dz}{d \bar x}.\) Some examples and particular cases are discussed.