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< ><B><FONT face="Times New Roman">Historical Introduction</FONT></B></P>
< ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Newton and Leibniz,quite independently of one another,were largely responsible for developing the ideas of integral calculus to the point where hitherto insurmountable problems could be solved by more or less routine methods.The successful accomplishments of these men were primarily due to the fact that they were able to fuse together the integral calculus with the second main branch of calculus,differential calculus.</FONT></P>
< ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The central idea of differential calculus is the notion of derivative.Like the integral,the derivative originated from a problem in geometry—the problem of finding the tangent line at a point of a curve.Unlile the integral,however,the derivative evolved very late in the history of mathematics.The concept was not formulated until early in the 17<SUP>th</SUP> century when the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat,attempted to determine the maxima and minima of certain special functions.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Fermat’s idea,basically very simple,can be understood if we refer to a curve and assume that at each of its points this curve has a definite direction that can be described by a tangent line.Fermat noticed that at certain points where the curve has a maximum or minimum,the tangent line must be horizontal.Thus the problem of locating such extreme values is seen to depend on the solution of another problem,that of locating the horizontal tangents.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>This raises the more general question of determining the direction of the tangent line at an arbitrary point of the curve.It was the attempt to solve this general problem that led Fermat to discover some of the rudimentary ideas underlying the notion of derivative.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>At first sight there seems to be no connection whatever between the problem of finding the area of a region lying under a curve and the problem of finding the tangent line at a point of a curve.The first person to realize that these two seemingly remote ideas are,in fact, rather intimately related appears to have been Newton’s teacher,Isaac Barrow(1630-1677).However,Newton and Leibniz were the first to understand the real importance of this relation and they exploited it to the fullest,thus inaugurating an unprecedented era in the development of mathematics.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Although the derivative was originally formulated to study the problem of tangents,it was soon found that it also provides a way to calculate velocity and,more generally,the rate of change of a function.In the next section we shall consider a special problem involving the calculation of a velocity.The solution of this problem contains all the essential fcatures of the derivative concept and may help to motivate the general definition of derivative which is given below.</FONT></P>
<P ><B><FONT face="Times New Roman">A Problem Involving Velocity</FONT></B></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Suppose a projectile is fired straight up from the ground with initial velocity of 144 feet persecond.Neglect friction,and assume the projectile is influenced only by gravity so that it moves up and back along a straight line.Let f(t) denote the height in feet that the projectile attains t seconds after firing.If the force of gravity were not acting on it,the projectile would continue to move upward with a constant velocity,traveling a distance of 144 feet every second,and at time t we woule have f(t)=144 t.In actual practice,gravity causes the projectile to slow down until its velocity decreases to zero and then it drops back to earth.Physical experiments suggest that as the projectile is aloft,its height f(t) is given by the formula</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=3>(1)</FONT> <FONT size=3>f(t)=144t –16 t<SUP>2</SUP></FONT></FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The term –16t<SUP>2</SUP> is due to the influence of gravity.Note that f(t)=0 when t=0 and when t=9.This means that the projectile returns to earth after 9 seconds and it is to be understood that formula (1) is valid only for 0<t<9.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The problem we wish to consider is this:To determine the velocity of the projectile at each instant of its motion.Before we can understand this problem,we must decide on what is meant by the velocity at each instant.To do this,we introduce first the notion of average velocity during a time interval,say from time t to time t+h.This is defined to be the quotient.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Change in distance during time interval =f(t+h)-f(t)/h</FONT></P>
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<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman">Length of time interval</FONT></P></TD></TR></TABLE>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>This quotient,called a difference quotient,is a number which may be calculated whenever both t and t+h are in the interval[0,9].The number h may be positive or negative,but not zero.We shall keep t fixed and see what happens to the difference quotient as we take values of h with smaller and smaller absolute value.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The limit process by which v(t) is obtained from the difference quotient is written symbolically as follows:</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">V(t)=lim<SUB>(h</SUB></FONT><SUB>→<FONT face="Times New Roman">0)</FONT></SUB><FONT face="Times New Roman"> [f(t+h)-f(t)]/h</FONT></FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The equation is used to define velocity not only for this particular example but,more generally,for any particle moving along a straight line,provided the position function f is such that the differerce quotient tends to a definite limit as h approaches zero.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>The example describe in the foregoing section points the way to the introduction of the concept of derivative.We begin with a function f defined at least on some open interval(a,b) on the x axis.Then we choose a fixed point in this interval and introduce the difference quotient</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>[f(x+h)-f(x)]/h</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>where the number h,which may be positive or negative(but not zero),is such that x+h also lies in(a,b).The numerator of this quotient measures the change in the function when x changes from x to x+h.The quotient itself is referred to as the average rate of change of f in the interval joining x to x+h.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Now we let h approach zero and see what happens to this quotient.If the quotient.If the quotient approaches some definite values as a limit(which implies that the limit is the same whether h approaches zero through positive values or through negative values),then this limit is called the derivative of f at x and is denoted by the symbol f’(x) (read as “f prime of x”).Thus the formal definition of f’(x) may be stated as follows:</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Definition of derivative.The derivative f’(x)is defined by the equation</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">f’(x)=lim<SUB>(h</SUB></FONT><SUB>→<FONT face="Times New Roman">o)</FONT></SUB><FONT face="Times New Roman">[f(x+h)-f(x)]/h</FONT></FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>provided the limit exists.The number f’(x) is also called the rate of change of f at x.</FONT></P>
<P ><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>In general,the limit process which produces f’(x) from f(x) gives a way of obtaining a new function f’ from a given function f.This process is called differentiation,and f’ is called the first derivative of f.If f’,in turn,is defined on an interval,we can try to compute its first derivative,denoted by f’’,and is called the second derivative of f.Similarly,the nth derivative of f denoted by f^(n),is defined to be the first derivative of f^(n-1).We make the convention that f^(0)=f,that is,the zeroth derivative is the function itself.</FONT></P> |
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