I haven't officially taken calculus, yet, (my high school didn't have it) and I've only read the first 5 chapters of a calculus text (strang's). I've been intending for a little while to finish reading
Calculus, but I've made little progress because physics is far more fun. My understanding of calculus (however unthrorough) comes from physics problems.
D H said:
Solving for r(t) where r(t) = \frac {x(t)} {L+vt} only requires high school AP calculus.
What didn't make sense to me in solving this, is that, I only know x(t) as "the solution to that other equation" so how am I supposed to integrate an ambiguous function?
[[[EDIT:]]]
[[[It makes more sense to me how it's possible, because although x(t) is ambiguous, the integral of x(t) (from 0 to the "T" which satisfies the problem) is known to be L+vT; but I still don't know how to use this knowledge]]]
D H said:
If you are in the US, you'll typically learn how to solve \frac {dx} {dt} = u + v \frac {x(t)} {L+vt} in your second or third college calculus class.
I've written it as the limit of a series, but there are two problems for figuring it out. The series is:
lim_{\Delta t\rightarrow 0} [^{(k/\Delta t)}_{(n=0)}\Sigma(x_n)]=vk\Delta t+L
Where x_n=nu\Delta t+\frac{x_{n-1}}{L+nv\Delta t}
The first problem is the way I've defined k (the upper limit). It is not explicitly stated (I couldn't think of a way to write it explicitly, so I just wrote the relationship). This makes it quite confusing to deal with.
The second problem is, (as I touched on in an earlier post,) the sequence is recursive. The definition of x_n depends on x_{n-1}. This isn't
theoretically a problem (because we know x_0=0) but it makes it too complicated for me. The only "solvable" (non recursive) way I can think of to write it is, as long chain of fractions (which becomes infinite in the limit).
That is beyond my capabilities, so I will just save this problem for a future day.
EDIT:
I probably should've written " k " as " T " because that's what it represents in the equation (it is the solution of the problem)