ADAM CLEMENTS – SME 430 – Discussion Post #10 – 4/14/2010

Complete the readings for this week and then post your reflections to the prompts below:

• How did calculus help solve some of Zeno’s paradoxes?

o It introduced the concepts of the dichotomy and the arrow.
 Dichotomy: If a straight line segment is infinitely divisible then motion is
impossible for in order to traverse the line segment it is necessary first to
reach the midpoint, and to do this one must first reach the one quarter
point, and to do this one must fist reach the one-eighth point, and so on
and so on. Calculus helps define this idea.
 Arrow: If time is made up of individual atomic instants, then moving
arrow is always at rest, for at any instant the arrow is in a fixed position.
Calculus helps define this idea.
o Differentiation was created in connection with problems on tangents to curves
with questions about maxima and minimum of functions.

• Describe how Archimedes Method of Equilibrium and the Method of Exhaustion may
have contributed to the creation and structure of calculus.
o Method of Exhaustion dealt with the computation of areas, volumes, and lengths
of arcs. No math existed to easily solve this, thus Calculus was born.
o The Method of Exhaustion is exhausting, so to find an easier way they developed
the Method of Equilibrium.

• List four contributions that Newton and Leibniz made to the creation of calculus.

1. Leibniz discovered the fundamental theorem of calculus

2. Leibniz worked out a number of the elementary formulas of differentiation
3. Newton discovered a method of fluxions
4. Newton contributed the principia, which for the first time a complete system of
dynamics and a complete mathematical formulation of the principal terrestrial and
celestial phenomena of motion were expressed.