Essay About Discovery Of Integral Calculus And 17Th Century

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Ever wonder how scientists figure out how long it takes for the radiation from a nuclear weapon to decay? This dilemma can be solved by calculus, which helps determine the rate of decay of the radioactive material. Calculus can aid people in many everyday situations, such as deciding how much fencing is needed to encompass a designated area. Finding how gravity affects certain objects is how calculus aids people who study Physics. Mechanics find calculus useful to determine rates of flow of fluids in a car. Numerous developments in mathematics by Ancient Greeks to Europeans led to the discovery of integral calculus, which is still expanding. The first mathematicians came from Egypt, where they discovered the rule for the volume of a pyramid and approximation of the area of a circle. Later, Greeks made tremendous discoveries. Archimedes extended the method of inscribed and circumscribed figures by means of heuristic, which are rules that are specific to a given problem and can therefore help guide the search. These arguments involved parallel slices of figures and the laws of the lever, the idea of a surface as made up of lines. Finding areas and volumes of figures by using conic section (a circle, point, hyperbola, etc.) and weighing infinitely thin slices of figures, an idea used in integral calculus today was also a discovery of Archimedes. One of Archimedess major crucial discoveries for integral calculus was a limit that allows the “slices” of a figure to be infinitely thin. Another Greek, Euclid, developed ideas supporting the theory of calculus, but the logic basis was not sustained since infinity and continuity werent established yet (Boyer 47). His one mistake in finding a definite integral was that it is not found by the sums of an infinite number of points, lines, or surfaces but by the limit of an infinite sequence (Boyer 47). These early discoveries aided Newton and Leibniz in the development of calculus. In the 17th century, people from all over Europe made numerous mathematics discoveries in the integral calculus field. Johannes Kepler “anticipat(ed) results found in the integral calculus” (Boyer 109) with his summations. For instance, in his Astronomia nova, he formed a summation similar to integral calculus dealing with sine and cosine. F. B. Cavalieri expanded on Johannes Keplers work on measuring volumes. Also, he “investigate[d] areas under the curve” (“Calculus (mathematics)”) with what he called “indivisible magnitudes.” A discovery by Pierre de Fermat on “finding the greatest and least value of some algebraic expressions” (“Calculus (mathematics)”) is now used in Differential Calculus. Discoveries made in Europe at this time greatly helped the development of calculus. Later in the 17th century, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz founded calculus. Calculus is defined as the study of the interplay between a function and its derivative (Priestley 78). Integral calculus is used to find areas and volumes under a curve. Newton contrived calculus first, but Leibniz was the first to publish work on it in 1686. Leibnizs symbols differed from Newtons; today, Leibniz used the notation dy/dx to represent the derivative of y as a function of x, instead of Newtons notation y Ñž. This notation reminds people that the derivative is the limit of ratios of change and/ or a limit of fractions. Newtons work included: linking infinite sums and the algebraic expressions of the inverse relation between tangents and areas. Previous to their discovery, rectangles were used to find area, though the estimated area was always too little or too much; calculus allowed these rectangles to be “infinitely thin”(“Integration”). Algebra is not useful to find areas under a curve, unlike calculus, which allows people to work with “continuously vary quantities” of figures (“Calculus: Math in flux”). One of Leinbizs main concerns was in the properties of numerical sequences and the sum and differences of the terms in such sequences. Blaise Pascal came extremely close to developing the fundamental theorem of calculus, which deals with the derivative and the definite integral; his work in this area led Leibniz to discover this theorem partial credit is given to him as well as Cauchy. The “relationship between the derivative and the definite integral has been called the root idea of the whole of the differential and integral calculus” (Boyer 11). Furthermore, he worked with sums and differences of sequences to determine tangents, which is an important idea at the core of calculus (Jesseph). Leibnizs Differential Calculus allows the problems of tangency to be reduced to a relatively simple algorithmic procedure. This procedure allows for varying types of curves to be studied. Another important detail of Leibnizs work includes using antiderivatives; Leibniz found how to get a functions first derivative back to the original function. For example, knowing