Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus

Calculus

With the technical preliminaries out of the way, the two fundamental aspects of calculus may be examined:

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  a. Finding the instantaneous rate of change of a variable quantity.
  
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  b. Calculating areas, volumes, and related “totals” by adding together many small parts.
  

Although it is not immediately obvious, each process is the inverse of the other, and this is why the two are brought together under the same overall heading. The first process is called differentiation, the second integration. Following a discussion of each, the relationship between them will be examined.

Differentiation

Differentiation is about rates of change; for geometric curves and figures, this means determining the slope, or tangent, along a given direction. Being able to calculate rates of change also allows one to determine where maximum and minimum values occur—the title of Leibniz’s first calculus publication was “Nova Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis, Itemque Tangentibus, qua nec Fractas nec Irrationales Quantitates Moratur, et Singulare pro illi Calculi Genus” (1684; “A New Method for Maxima and Minima, as Well as Tangents, Which Is Impeded Neither by Fractional nor by Irrational Quantities, and a Remarkable Type of Calculus for This”). Early applications for calculus included the study of gravity and planetary motion, fluid flow and ship design, and geometric curves and bridge engineering.

Average rates of change

A simple illustrative example of rates of change is the speed of a moving object. An object moving at a constant speed travels a distance that is proportional to the time. For example, a car moving at 50 kilometres per hour (km/hr) travels 50 km in 1 hr, 100 km in 2 hr, 150 km in 3 hr, and so on. A graph of the distance traveled against the time elapsed looks like a straight line whose slope, or gradient, yields the speed (see figure).

Graph of distance traveled versus time elapsed for the motion of an automobileBecause the speed of the automobile is constant in this example (50 kilometres per hour), the graph is a straight line.
Constant speeds pose no particular problems—in the example above, any time interval yields the same speed—but variable speeds are less straightforward. Nevertheless, a similar approach can be used to calculate the average speed of an object traveling at varying speeds: simply divide the total distance traveled by the time taken to traverse it. Thus, a car that takes 2 hr to travel 100 km moves with an average speed of 50 km/hr. However, it may not travel at the same speed for the entire period. It may slow down, stop, or even go backward for parts of the time, provided that during other parts it speeds up enough to cover the total distance of 100 km. Thus, average speeds—certainly if the average is taken over long intervals of time—do not tell us the actual speed at any given moment.