Brittney Miller Math 5010

Calculus in general is far-reaching in our everyday lives. The book, “Everyday Calculus” by Oscar E. Fernandez, gives several examples of calculus such as measuring and predicting trends, to driving and understanding velocity, to GPS calculating your speed. However, I think most often, when people hear the word “calculus” they think of the complex ways we can use it to solve problems like creating roller coasters or flying spaceships. A Calculus I student would be able to tell you that you can use calculus to find the maximums and minimums of equations, describe the shape and direction of a function, and find areas under a curve. Even after one course on calculus, a student has the ability to determine if a roller coaster will make it up a hill using tools learned such as finding maximums. Further still, as students continue on in their education, they learn about series and summing infinite sequences, how to find volumes, the TNB frame and jerk, find lengths of functions, just to name a few. Often, after taking calculus for even two semesters, students have more knowledge on acceleration and the different forces that one would feel on a roller coaster. As explained in the paper titled, “Beyond velocity and acceleration: jerk, snap and higher derivatives”, authors David Eager, Ann-Marie Pendrill, and Nina Reistad explain,  “Roller coaster passengers need time to sense acceleration changes and adjust their muscle tension or suffer conditions such as whiplash”. A student fresh out of calculus II has enough knowledge under their belts to be able to tell what the jerk is for a function. Professionals in varied fields such as engineers, chemists, physicists, physicians, researchers, video game programers, animators, economists, and more use calculus everyday for their jobs. Thus, whether we notice it or not, calculus is in one way or another prevalent in our everyday lives and society.

All of this from such humble beginnings. Though the concept of a limit was not formally developed for thousands of years, mathematicians were using the idea of it even in ancient Greece. By using geometry, people of ancient times were able to approximate areas and even volumes of curved objects long before we had the ability to calculate their exact values. Once the groundwork was laid by the work of mathematicians over thousands of years, calculus was formally invented by multiple people.