Nabaa Mahdi

Math 1210, Shayne Vargo

April 25, 2019

Course Reflection

"One of the greatest contributions to modern mathematics, science, and engineering was

the invention of calculus near the end of the 17th century," says The New Book of Popular

Science.

This course has an interesting approach to mathematics. It is different from the math we

learned in high school, in that it carries more complex and real world application of

mathematical concepts. One the most important things I learned in this class is finding

derivatives. Derivatives are, as I stated in the project, the exact rate at which one quantity

changes with respect to another. Geometrically, the derivative is the slope of curve at the point

on the curve. The derivative of a function represents an infinitely small change with respect to

one of its variables.

Finding derivatives is an important concept that applies to many things in the real world.

The most common practical use of calculus (derivatives) is when plotting graphs of certain

formulae or functions. Using derivatives, a graph and its dimensions can be accurately measured.

You can estimate how a graph looks like, direction at specific points as well as shape.

One of the skills I mastered in this course is calculating velocities, acceleration and

position of given problems. This is reflected in the derivatives project. I feel that this type of

problem solving was the most helpful method for me to understand the true meaning of

derivatives and be able to apply it to real world problems.

 Calculus is used in many ways and applications. Calculus is applied in many science

fields, such as physics, engineering,astronomy, economics and medicine. It is used to create

mathematical models and representations of information and data. Since I’m a chemistry major,

calculus can be a very useful tool. When conducting chemical reactions, calculus can be helpful

to calculate rates of change of energy to predict when a reaction really took place. It also can be

used to calculate radioactive decay. There’s a lot of advanced chemistry that required lots of

mathematics that I still haven’t learned yet.

Regardless of the grade I have in this class, I find it a really interesting subject to further

continue learning. I love to learn about all those complexities that I never thought of and how

they are applied in today’s world. Mathematics is applied in almost everything around us we just

don’t see it until we learn it.