The Conclusion of the Calculus...or is it?

Above here you can see what the Calculus can get up to given its wicked way.......

However, we haven't QUITE reached that level yet.....

So, we were up to ‘speed’. I had just finished introducing what ‘speed’ is.

‘Speed’ is the average over, well, in our case, an hour. In 1 hour, we travelled exactly 60 km. And in 30 minutes, we travelled 30 km. So, what was our speed in the last second? Why, 60kph of course. BUT this is not our speed NOW. That was just in the last second.

The measure of speed seems to depend on the time interval before we took the measurement, and, normally this is enough, for cars at least.

But for Math, and certainly Physics, we need more, we need the speed NOW. The way we do this is easy in principle. We begin to make our measurement over shorter and shorter time intervals, until the time interval is so small, the speed we measure is to all intents and purposes, the speed we are doing NOW.

In fact, it turns out there is a real easy way to calculate this NOW speed in Math. We do it with a technique called the Calculus.

Scientists use this technique all the time as 1). It is painfully easy for those used to it, and 2). There are so many ways we can use it, rather than just calculating how fast a car is travelling.

In fact, the use of Calculus is so widespread that Physics would fall apart if Newton hadn’t formulated it. Maybe that is a bit of a strong statement, but without Calculus, science would be completely lost.

Examples of the use of Calculus include speed, acceleration, angular momentum, currents in circuits, voltages, astronomy, black holes, relativity, tensors, athletics, rockets, brake fluids, air conditioning and quantum mechanics.

And those are only the ones from the top of my head (which is pretty small anyway!)

Suffice it to say, Calculus is the cornerstone of physics (OPINION!), and this reader is astonished that schools in the UK have deferred the teaching of it, even the basics, until after 18. And they STILL say exams are not easier here despite everyone getting A grades!

Maybe I will give some beautiful examples of how the Calculus is used in a later post……