Calculus: the mathematical study of change

By:Shikha Sebastain

Calculus[Math Project] By Shikha Sebastian

Calculus is the mathematical study of change. Two main topics that come under calculus are 1) Differential calculus(concerning with slopes and rates of change) 2) Integral calculus(concerning accumulation of quantities and area under curves)

In this paper I have focus on differential calculus and only mentioned integral calculus.

Differential Calculus
This is the study of the definition, properties and application of the derivatives of a function.

History
The concept of a derivative in the sense of a tangent line is a very old one, familiar to Greek geometers such as Euclid (c. 300 BC), Archimedes (c. 287212 BC) and Apollonius of Perga (c. 262190 BC).Archimedes also introduced the use of infinitesimals, although these were primarily used to study areas and volumes rather than derivatives and tangents; see Archimedes' use of infinitesimals. The use of infinitesimals to study rates of change can be found in Indian mathematics, perhaps as early as 500 AD, when the astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata (476550) used infinitesimals to study the motion of the moon. The use of infinitesimals to compute rates of change was developed significantly by Bhskara II (11141185); indeed, it has been argued that many of the key notions of differential calculus can be found in his work, such as "Rolle's theorem". The Persian mathematician, Sharaf al-Dn al-Ts (11351213), was the first to discover the derivative of cubic polynomials, an important result in differential calculus; his Treatise on Equations developed concepts related to differential calculus, such as the derivative function and the maxima and minima of curves, in order to solve cubic equations which may not have positive solutions. The modern development of calculus is usually credited to Isaac Newton (1643 1727) and Gottfried Leibniz (16461716), who provided independentand unified approaches to differentiation and derivatives. The key insight, however, that earned them this credit, was the fundamental theorem of calculus relating differentiation and integration: this rendered obsolete most previous methods for computing areas and volumes, which had not been significantly extended since the time of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen). For their ideas on derivatives, both Newton and Leibniz built on significant earlier work by mathematicians such as Isaac Barrow (16301677), Ren Descartes (15961650), Christiaan Huygens (16291695), Blaise Pascal (16231662) and John Wallis (16161703). Isaac Barrow is generally given credit for the early development of the derivative. Nevertheless, Newton and Leibniz remain key figures in the history of differentiation, not least because Newton was the first to apply differentiation to theoretical physics, while Leibniz systematically developed much of the notation still used today. Since the 17th century many mathematicians have contributed to the theory of differentiation. In the 19th century, calculus was put on a much more rigorous footing by mathematicians such as Augustin Louis Cauchy (17891857), Bernhard Riemann (18261866), and Karl Weierstrass (18151897). It was also during this period that the differentiation was generalized to Euclidean space and the complex plane.

Calculus[Math Project] By Shikha Sebastian

Differentiation and Slopes

The slope(m) of a graph is generally found by the formula

But this is not very accurate in curves where the slope is continuously changing.

When we find the slope of a tagent of a point we are finding this points derivative.
The process of finding the derivative of a function is called differentiation.

Differentiating the equation of a graph gives you the equation of the slope of the graph. For curves it gives you the slope of a particular point by finding the slope of its tangent. In the following graph of the function, we see the geometric tangent at the point (a, f(a)).

There are two ways of showing showing a derivative. For y, we use dy/dx. For f(x) we use a prime and show it as f(x).

Calculus[Math Project] By Shikha Sebastian

Formulas
A few formulas commonly used to find derivatives are shown the picture below.

And for slightly more complicated derivatives.

Calculus[Math Project] By Shikha Sebastian

Stationary points and second derivatives Differentiation can be used for finding the stationary point of a quadratic graph i.e. the (x) quardinates of the maximum or minimum point of the curve. Here a second derivtive can be found(which is basically defferentiating the equation of a curve twice which is shown as d2y/dx2 or f(x)) to define wether the curve is a maximum or a minimum. If the second derivative is positive value, it is a minumum as the slope of the graph was positive until now and would be negative further on. If the second derivative is negative value, it is a minimum as the slope of the graph was negative until now and would be positive further on.

Calculus[Math Project] By Shikha Sebastian

Chain Rule The chain rule is a formula for finding the derivative of the composition of two or more functions.

Practical usage ONE example is: If you know the instantanious velocity of an object at any instant then the question arises to determine the position of the object at that instant. Differentianton cn be used for this. Integeral calculus Intigrals are also called antiderivatives. This is because when you intigrate a derivative, you get original equation of the curve(without the constant) and n unknown constant c/k.

References All of the project is hand typed(except history which was taken directly from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_calculus#History_of_differentiation). I do not own the images in this paper, they have all been takes from google images. My information was taken from a few books, http://en.wikipedia.org and http://thecalculuspage.com

Calculus[Math Project] By Shikha Sebastian