CALCULUS: THE BASICS

A Project Work Report

By
Jiwan Rijal
Stream: Science Section:D-2
NEB Registration Number:……….

Submitted to
The Department of Mathematics
Kathmandu Model Secondary School
 Bagh bazar, Kathmandu
Nepal

A Report on the partial fulfillment of the requirements of the

Internal evaluation of
Grade XI
 DECLARATION
I hear by declare that the report presented in this project report has been done by myself under
the supervision of Mr Chuda Prasad Pokharel and has not been submitted elsewhere for any
examination.

All sources of the information have been specifically acknowledged by references to authors or
institutions.

Signature:
Name of Student: Jiwan Rijal
Stream Science
Section D-2
Date : 15/10/2022
 Appendix C: Subject Teacher’s Recommendation

The project work report entitled ‘CALCULUS : THE BASICS’ submitted by Jiwan Rijal, of
Kathmandu Model Secondary School, Bagh Bazar, Kathmandu, Nepal is prepared under my
supervision as per the procedure and format requirements laid by the Department of
Mathematics, Kathmandu Model Secondary School, as the partial fulfillment of the requirements
of the internal evaluation of grade XI. I, therefore, recommend the report for evaluation.

Signature :

Name of Subject Teacher: Mr Chuda Prasad Pokharel

Date:

Appendix D: Endorsement
We here by endorse the project work entitled ‘CALCULUS : THE BASICS ’
submitted by Jiwan Rijal of Kathmandu Model Secondary School, Bagh Bazar,
Kathmandu in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the internal evaluation of
mathematics of grade XI.

Signature: Signature:

Chiranjivi Gyawali Nagendra Aryal

Head Department of Mathematics Principal
Date: Date:

Appendix E: Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Mr Chuda Prasad Pokharel for
bringing this topic to my attention and for his support and guidance during the preparation of this
project work. I am grateful to my respected mathematics teachers who contributed to build
strong foundation of mathematics. Special thanks go to my classmate Susim Paudel who helped
me while preparing this project report.

Appendix F: Table of Contents

Title Page…………………………………………………………… …………..i
Declaration…………………………………………………………………………ii
Subject Teacher’ recommendation…………………………………………….iii
Endorsement…………………………………………………………………….iv
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………v
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………..……
vi
CHAPTER I:History……………………………………………….1
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………
1
History………………………………………………………………………….2
CHPATER II: RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS…….
…………………………….5
Limits………………………………………………………………………………
………….5
Continuity Of
Limits…………………………………………………………………7
Indeterminate
Forms……………………………………………………………………..10
Derivatives…………………………………………………………………………
………….12
Anti-
Derivatives………………………………………………………………………..14
CHAPTER III: FINDING AND
CONCLUSION………………………………..17
Applications of
Calculus……………………………………………………………..17
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………
……..18
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………
……19
 INTRODUCTION TO CALCULUS
Calculus is one of the most important branches of mathematics that deals with continuous
change. Before calculus was invented, all math was static: It could only help calculate objects
that were perfectly still. But the universe is constantly moving and changing. No objects—from
the stars in space to subatomic particles or cells in the body—are always at rest. Indeed, just
about everything in the universe is constantly moving. Calculus helped to determine how
particles, stars, and matter actually move and change in real time. Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac
Newton, 17th-century mathematicians, both invented calculus independently. Newton invented it
first, but Leibniz created the notations that mathematicians use today. There are two types of
calculus: Differential calculus determines the rate of change of a quantity, while integral calculus
finds the quantity where the rate of change is known.

HISTORY OF CALCULUS

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The main ideas which underpin the calculus developed over a very long period of time indeed.
The first steps were taken by Greek mathematicians. To the Greeks numbers were ratios of
integers so the number line had "holes" in it. They got round this difficulty by using lengths,
areas and volumes in addition to numbers for, to the Greeks, not all lengths were numbers.
Leucippus, Democritus and Antiphon all made contributions to the Greek method of exhaustion
which was put on a scientific basis by Eudoxus about 370 BC. The method of exhaustion is so
called because one thinks of the areas measured expanding so that they account for more and
more of the required area. However Archimedes, around 225 BC, made one of the most
significant of the Greek contributions. His first important advance was to show that the area of a
segment of a parabola is 4/3  the area of a triangle with the same base and vertex and 2/3 of the
area of the circumscribed parallelogram. Archimedes constructed an infinite sequence of
triangles starting with one of area AA and continually adding further triangles between the
existing ones and the parabola to get the conclusion:
The area of the segment of the parabola is therefore
A(1+1/4+1/42+1/43+….)=(4/3)A
This is the first known example of the summation of an infinite series.
After this, No further progress was made until the 16th Century when mechanics began to drive
mathematicians to examine problems such as centers of gravity. Kepler, in his work on planetary
motion, had to find the area of sectors of an ellipse. His method consisted of thinking of areas
as sums of lines, another crude form of integration. Three mathematicians, born within three
years of each other, were the next to make major contributions. They
were Fermat, Roberval and Cavalieri.
Cavalieri thought of an area as being made up of components which were lines and then
summed his infinite number of 'indivisibles'. He showed, using these methods, that the integral
of xn from 0 to 1 was an+1/(n+1)by showing the result for a number of values of n and inferring
the general result.
Roberval considered problems of the same type but was much more rigorous
than Cavalieri. Roberval looked at the area between a curve and a line as being made up of an
infinite number of infinitely narrow rectangular strips. He applied this to the integral of xm
from 0 to 1 which he showed had approximate value:
m m m m
0 +1 +2 …+ ( n−1 )
m +1
n
Roberval  then asserted that this tended to 1/(m+1) as n tends to infinity, so calculating the area.

Fermat also investigated maxima and minima by considering when the tangent to the curve was
parallel to the xx-axis. He wrote to Descartes giving the method essentially as used today,
namely finding maxima and minima by calculating when the derivative of the function was 0. In
fact, because of this work, Lagrange stated clearly that he considers Fermat to be the inventor of
the calculus.

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Barrow gave a method of tangents to a curve where the tangent is given as the limit of a chord as
the points approach each other known as Barrow's differential triangle.
An awareness of the inverse of differentiation began to evolve naturally and the idea that integral
and derivative were inverses to each other were familiar to Barrow. In fact,
although Barrow never explicitly stated the fundamental theorem of the calculus, he was working
towards the result and Newton was to continue with this direction and state the Fundamental
Theorem of the Calculus explicitly.
Newton wrote a tract on fluxions in October 1666. This was a work which was not published at
the time but seen by many mathematicians and had a major influence on the direction the
calculus was to take. Newton thought of a particle tracing out a curve with two moving lines
which were the coordinates. The horizontal velocity x' and the vertical velocity y′ were the
fluxions of x and y associated with the flux of time. The fluent or flowing
quantities were x and y themselves. With this fluxion notation y'/x' was the tangent to 
f(x, y) = 0

In his 1666 tract, Newton discusses the converse problem, given the relationship

between xx and y'/x' find y. Hence the slope of the tangent was given for each xx and when y'/x'
= f(x) then Newton solves the problem by antidifferentiation. He also calculated areas by
antidifferentiation and this work contains the first clear statement of the Fundamental
Theorem of the Calculus.

Newton had problems publishing his mathematical work. Barrow was in some way to blame for
this since the publisher of Barrow's work had gone bankrupt and publishers were, after this, wary
of publishing mathematical works! Newton's work on Analysis with infinite series was written
in 1669 and circulated in manuscript. It was not published until 1711. Similarly his Method of
fluxions and infinite series was written in 1671 and published in English translation in 1736. The
Latin original was not published until much later. In these two works Newton calculated the
series expansion for sinx and cosx and the expansion for what was actually the exponential
function, although this function was not established until Euler introduced the present
notation ex.

Leibniz learnt much on a European tour which led him to meet Huygens in Paris in 1672. He
also met Hooke and Boyle in London in 1673 where he bought several mathematics books,
including Barrow's works. Leibniz was to have a lengthy correspondence with Barrow. On
returning to Paris Leibniz did some very fine work on the calculus, thinking of the foundation
very

Newton considered variables changing with time. Leibniz thought of variables x,y as ranging

over sequences of infinitely close values. He introduced dx and dy as differences between
successive values of these sequences. Leibniz knew that dy/dx gives the tangent but he did not
use it as a defining property.

For Newton integration consisted of finding fluents for a given fluxion so the fact that integration
and differentiation were inverses was implied. Leibniz used integration as a sum, in a rather
similar way to Cavalieri.

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Neither Leibniz nor Newton thought in terms of functions, however, but both always thought in
terms of graphs. For Newton the calculus was geometrical while Leibniz took it towards
analysis.

Leibniz was very conscious that finding a good notation was of fundamental importance and
thought a lot about it. Newton, on the other hand, wrote more for himself and, as a consequence,
tended to use whatever notation he thought of on the day. Leibniz's notation of d and ∫
highlighted the operator aspect which proved important in later developments.
By 1675 Leibniz had settled on the notation:
1 2
∫ yⅆy = y
2
His results on the integral calculus were published in 1684 and 1686 under the name 'calculus
summatorius', the name integral calculus was suggested by Jacob Bernoulli in 1690.

After Newton and Leibniz the development of the calculus was continued by Jacob

Bernoulli and Johann Bernoulli. However when Berkeley published
his Analyst in 1734 attacking the lack of rigour in the calculus and disputing the logic on which it
was based much effort was made to tighten the reasoning. Maclaurin attempted to put the
calculus on a rigorous geometrical basis but the really satisfactory basis for the calculus had to
wait for the work of Cauchy in the 19th Century.

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

LIMITS
The limit of a function at a point a in its domain (if it exists) is the value that the function
approaches as its argument approaches a.. The concept of a limit is the fundamental concept of

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calculus and analysis. It is used to define the derivative and the definite integral, and it can also
be used to analyze the local behavior of functions near points of interest.

Informally, a function is said to have a limit LL at a if it is possible to make the function

arbitrarily close to L by choosing values closer and closer to a. Note that the actual value at a is
irrelevant to the value of the limit.

The notation is as follows:

li m f ( x ) =L
x→a

which is read as "the limit of f(x) as x approaches a is L."

Solved Examples

5
 CONTINUITY OF A FUNCTION
A function f(x) is said to be continuous at x=a if the following conditions are met:

6
 I. f(a) exists (i.e. the functional value exists)
II. lim f ( x ) exists
x→ a

III. lim f ( x )=f(a)

x→ a

That is, A function f(x) is said to be continuous at the point x=a if

+¿
lim ¿
x→ a = lim
−¿
¿¿
x →a =f ( a) ¿

If the above conditions are not met, the function is simply discontinuous at point x=a.
A continuous function doesn’t show any jump in a graph.

SOLVED EXAMPLES

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8
9
 INDETERMINATE FORMS
While evaluating the limit of a quotient, it may happen that the quotient takes the meaningless
form 0/0 at a point and generally called an indeterminate form. The other indeterminate forms
are ∞/∞, 0×∞, ∞−∞, 0⁰, ∞⁰,1^±∞.
When the value of the function upon direct substitution become the indeterminate form of the
type 0/0, you must do some algebraic manipulation to get rid of that form.

Some solved examples are:

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11
 DERIVATIVES
Derivatives are defined as the varying rate of change of a function with respect to an
independent variable. The derivative is primarily used when there is some varying quantity, and
the rate of change is not constant. The derivative is used to measure the sensitivity of one
variable (dependent variable) with respect to another variable (independent variable).
The process of finding the derivative is called differentiation. The inverse process is called anti-
differentiation. Let’s find the derivative of a function y = f(x).  It is the measure of the rate at
which the value of y changes with respect to the change of the variable x. It is known as the
derivative of the function “f”, with respect to the variable x.
If an infinitesimal change in x is denoted as dx, then the derivative of y with respect to x is
written as dy/dx.
Here the derivative of y with respect to x is read as “dy by dx” or “dy over dx”
Example:
Let ‘y’ be a dependent variable and ‘x’ be an independent variable.
Consider a change in the value of x, that is dx.
This change in x will bring a change in y, let that be dy.
Now to find out the change in y with a unit change in x as follows:
Let f(x) be a function whose value varies as the value of x varies
Steps to find the Derivative:

1. Change x by the smallest possible value and let that be ‘h’ and so the function becomes
f(x+h).
2. Get the change in value of function that is : f(x + h) – f(x)
3. The rate of change in function f(x) on changing from ‘x’ to ‘x+h’ will be

lim f ( x+ h )−f ( x )
ⅆ y h→ 0
=
ⅆx h

Some Solved Examples

12
ANTI-DERIVATIVES(INTEGRATIONS)

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Let f be a continuous function defined in an open interval (a, b). Then a function F is
said to be an antiderivative off on the interval, if the derivative of F is equal to f on the
interval, i.e.,
if
ⅆ F ( x)
= f(x), x belongs to (a,b)
ⅆx
As the derivative of a constant c is zero, F(x) + c is also an antiderivative of f, whenever
the function F is so. Actually, when
ⅆ F ( x)
=f(x)
ⅆx
We have,
ⅆ [F (x )+c ] ⅆ F ( x ) ⅆ c
= +
ⅆx ⅆx ⅆx
The converse is also true: any two antiderivatives of a function differ by a constant. Let
F and G be antiderivatives of a function f. Then
ⅆ [ F ( x ) −G ( x ) ] ⅆ F ( x ) dG ( x )
= −
ⅆx ⅆx ⅆx
= f(x)-f(x)
=0

From this it follows that there exists a constant c such that

F(x)-G(x) = c.
All these go to establish the fact that if F is an antiderivative of f, F(x) + c gives all the
possible antiderivatives off, when c runs through all real numbers.

Now it is desirable to have a general form of all antiderivatives of f. This general form,
which we call indefinite integral of f, is denoted by
∫ fdx∨ ∫ f ( x ) ⅆx

If F is an antiderivative off, we have

∫ f ( x ) ⅆx =F ( x )+ c
One basic property of the indefinite integral is
∫ {C 1 f ( x )+C 2 g ( x ) } ⅆx =c 1 ∫ f ( x ) ⅆx +c 2 ∫ g ( x ) ⅆx +c
where f and g are continuous functions in an interval (a, b) and C, and C₂ are some
constants.

SOLVED EXAMPLE
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15
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 CHAPTER III: FINDING AND CONCLUSION

APPLICATIONS OF CALCULUS
Calculus is one of the greatest discoveries of human kind due to it having a lot of applications in
our lives, and the progression of science and technology. Some applications of calculus are:
Finding the Slope of a Curve
Calculus can give us a generalized method of finding the slope of a curve. The slope of a line is
fairly elementary, using some basic algebra it can be found. Although when we are dealing with
a curve it is a different story. Calculus allows us to find out how steeply a curve will tilt at any
given time. This can be very useful in any area of study.
Calculating the Area of Any Shape
Although we do have standard methods to calculate the area of some shapes, calculus allows us
to do much more. Trying to find the area on a shape like this would be very difficult if it wasn’t
for calculus.
Calculate Complicated X-intercepts
Without an idea like the Intermediate Value Theorem it would be exceptionally hard to find or
even know that a root existed in some functions. Using Newton’s Method you can also calculate
an irrational root to any degree of accuracy, something your calculator would not be able to tell
you if it wasn’t for calculus.
Visualizing Graphs
Using calculus you can practically graph any function or equation you would like. In fact you
can find out the maximum and minimum values, where it increases and decreases and much
more without even graphing a point, all using calculus.
Finding the Average of a Function
A function can represent many things. One example is the path of an airplane. Using calculus
you can calculate its average cruising altitude, velocity and acceleration. Same goes for a car,
bus, or anything else that moves along a path. Now what would you do without a speedometer on
your car?
Calculating Optimal Values
By using the optimization of functions in just a few steps you can answer very practical and
useful questions such as: “You have square piece of cardboard, with sides 1 meter in length.
Using that piece of card board, you can make a box, what are the dimensions of a box containing
the maximal volume?” These types of problems are a wonderful result of what calculus can do
for us.

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 CONCLUSION
The report hence made by the group has helped us to know about the history, branches and
importance of calculus in the progression of science and technologies. Calculus is a huge branch
of mathematics, hence making a report on such vast and broad topic can be a bit challenging but
our group believes that the important basics of this branch has been covered in this report. This
report brought up the conclusion of calculus being a fun as well as a challenging branch of
mathematics.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY
A lot of links and books were taken as reference for this report. They are:
 https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_rise_of_calculus/

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshparnell/limit-theory-an-infinite-procedural-
space-game?fbclid=IwAR2YLfMp3AOTZLN2TSHK159WEsVfQrnrVRR--v-
qIXFpOC5GpmfWhUrfA_s
 https://calculus.nipissingu.ca/calc_app.html?
fbclid=IwAR24gWBOW1ruFBVBiIalxxBA65M-
OJ0FaYSj_BtOEl_R1vY4njXtaARNddA

 https://byjus.com/maths/derivatives/

 https://brilliant.org/wiki/limits-of-functions/

 FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS, ASMITA PUBLICATIONS

 BASIC MATHEMATICS GRADE XI

 PRINCIPLES OF MATHEMATICS

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