CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Calculus EEE 1-1 Velocity and Distance The right way to begin a calculus book is with calculus. This chapter will jump directly into the two problems that the subject was invented to solve. You will see what the questions are, and you will see an important part of the answer. There are plenty of good things left for the other chapters, so why not get started ? The book begins with an example that is familiar to everybody who drives a car. Itis, calculus in action—the driver sees it happening. The example is the relation between the speedometer and the odometer. One measures the speed (or velocity); the other measures the distance traveled. We will write v for the velocity, and f for how far the car has gone. The two instruments sit together on the dashboard: Fig. 1.1 Velocity v and total distance f (at one instant of time), Notice that the units of measurement are different for v and f. The distance / is measured in kilometers or miles (itis easier to say miles). The velocity v is measured in km/hr or miles per hour. A unit of time enters the velocity but not the distance. Every formula to compute v from f will have f divided by time.52 1. Introduction to Calculus Can you find v if you know f, and vice versa, and how? If we know the velocity over the whole history of the car, we should be able to compute the total distance traveled. In other words, if the speedometer record is complete but the odometer is missing, its information could be recovered. One way to do it (without calculus) is to put in a new odometer and drive the car all over again at the right speeds. That seems like a hard way; calculus may be easier. But the point is that the information is there. If we know everything about v, there must be a method to find f. What happens in the opposite direction, when f is known? If you have a complete record of distance, could you recover the complete velocity? In principle you could drive the car, repeat the history, and read off the speed. Again there must be a better way. The whole subject of calculus is built on the relation between v and f. The question we are raising here is not some kind of joke, after which the book will get serious and the mathematics will get started. On the contrary, / am serious now—and the mathematics has already started. We need to know how to find the velocity from a record of the distance, (That is called differentiation, and it is the central idea of differential calculus.) We also want to compute the distance from a history of the velocity. (That is integration, and it is the goal of integral calculus.) Differentiation goes from f to v; integration goes from v to f. We look first at examples in which these pairs can be computed and understood, CONSTANT VELOCITY Suppose the velocity is fixed at v = 60 (miles per hour). Then f increases at this constant rate, After to hours the distance is f = 120 (miles). After four hours f =240 and after t hours f = 60r. We say that f increases linearly with time— its graph is a straight line. velocity v2) distance f(t) 2. 4 Fig. 1.2 Constant velocity v ~ 60 and linearly increasing distance f — 601 ‘Notice that this example starts the car at full velocity. No time is spent picking up speed. (The velocity is a “step function”) Notice also that the distance starts at zero; the car is new. Those decisions make the graphs of » and / as neat as possible. One is the horizontal line v = 60. The other is the sloping line f= 601. This v, f,t relation needs algebra but not calculus: If v is constant and f starts at zero then f = vt The opposite is also true. When f increases linearly, v is constant. The division by time gives the slope. The distance is f: = 120 miles when the time is fy =2 hours. Later fo = 240 miles at 12 = 4 hours. At both points, the ratio f/1 is 60 miles/hour. Geometrically, the velocity is the slope of the distance graph: