A question about Thomas Calculus book

1. May 12, 2014

CharlieTan84

Hello all,
Soon I'm planning to restudy calculus to learn it to a better extend. Therefore, I'll start a course in coursera "Calculus-Single Variable" (https://www.coursera.org/course/calcsing), and besides that I already have the Thomas Calculus 10th edition so my plan is to study from this book either. However I'm curious about one thing. On this book, there are many chapters that are not being covered in the coursera course, such as "vectors in the plane and polar functions" or "vectors and motion in space". Are these chapters a part of multivariable calculus, or it's just Thomas Calculus is a more extensive book that covers lots of topics that are not covered in calculus.
Thank you very much and have a great day.

2. May 12, 2014

micromass

Those topics are usually covered in a multivariable calculus course, so it's normal that the coursera course won't touch them.

3. May 12, 2014

HallsofIvy

A typical "Calculus class" covers three to four semesters with multivariable Calculus the last one or two semesters. There are smaller texts that cover only one or two semester- but I personally think you can't do better than "Thomas".

4. May 16, 2014

CharlieTan84

Hello micromass and Hallsoflvy,
I have an another question. Is Differential Equations course a part of Multivariable Calculus? Cause during my engineering studies we studied that course seperately. So were we implicitely further studying Multivariable Calculus?
Thank you very much and have a great day!

5. May 16, 2014

micromass

No, differential equations is not a part of multivariable calculus. Ordinary differential equations like $y^\prime = y$ should actually be part of single variable calculus, but there is not enough time to cover that so it's a separate course. There are however techniques from multivariable calculus that come up in solving ODE's such as solving exact equations.
Partial differential equations could be seen as an extension of multivariable calculus.

6. Jun 2, 2014

CharlieTan84

Dear all,
One last question: After finishing Single Variable Calculus, I'd like to start on Multi Variable Calculus. Do you think Thomas Calculus 10th Edition will be enough for that? If I study this book all the way through, will I be able to master Multi Variable Calculus?

7. Jun 7, 2014