Real life application of calculus

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around real-life applications of calculus, with participants sharing various examples to illustrate its relevance and utility in different contexts.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests radioisotope production and burnout in an operating fission reactor as an application of calculus.
  • Another participant mentions that understanding simple motion over time has been beneficial for grasping calculus concepts.
  • A different example involves calculating the amount of money in a bank account over time, factoring in a starting amount and interest rate.
  • One participant proposes the volume of a torus as an application, explaining how to calculate the total volume of a donut using integration and the method of cylindrical shells, based on calories per unit volume.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants present multiple examples of calculus applications, indicating a variety of perspectives without a consensus on a single application being the most relevant.

Contextual Notes

Some examples may depend on specific assumptions about the scenarios described, such as the nature of the interest rate or the definition of the torus in the context of caloric measurement.

Who May Find This Useful

Individuals interested in understanding the practical applications of calculus in fields such as physics, finance, and geometry may find this discussion beneficial.

Eltahawy
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i want a real life application of calculus so that I can understand it
 
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Radioisotope production and burnout in an operating fission reactor.
 
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Simple motion over time helped me understand calculus better than anything.
 
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Calculating how much money you have in the bank as a function of time given a starting amount of money and a certain interest rate.
 
Everyone likes donuts, so volume of a torus is a pretty good application of calculus.
Let's say you want to know how many calories are in the donut you're about to eat, but you only know the number of calories per unit volume. To find the total volume, you can rotate the cross section of the donut around the center of the empty hole in the middle (in this context, the empty hole is a distance form the y-axis).
This is a pretty typical application of integrating to find volumes by the method of summing cylindrical shells.
 

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