Welcome to Mrs. Young's calculus class blog! Each week, I will start a new post. Students, you can write questions for me or chat with each other about how to solve a particular problem. As part of your class participation grade each week, every student must comment at least once to my post or another student's comment. I look forward to spending this year with you. Enjoy!

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Week 5

Welcome to week 5 of the 2nd quarter! Can you believe that we are about half way through the 2nd quarter? This week we are going to start chapter 4, which is all about applications of derivatives. Now that we've learned how to find the derivatives of lots of different types of functions in chapter 3, we will now learn how we can use the derivatives in real life in chapter 4. Chapter 4 will also be the last chapter that we will learn about before the semester exam in December! One area where we can use derivatives in real life is in economics. Derivatives help us to find the maximum and minimum values of functions, so we can maximize revenue and profit, or we can minimize cost in economics-related situations. We will be learning about this during this week. I would like you to discuss an area in real life where you think that derivatives might be applicable. Remember, derivatives are rates of changes and like I said, they can also help us find the maximum and minimum values of functions.
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11 comments:

  1. aiden wangNovember 13, 2011 at 4:59 PM

    examples for derivatives is everywhere in our life. for example, if i have a flock of sheep, i can weight them every day. Them i will get a equation to describe the relationship between time and the sum of the weight. i can know whether the sheep are getting fatter by the sign of derivative.And i can also find the time when the sheep are heaviest in a year. So that i know when to sell them out.

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  2. Mrs. YoungNovember 14, 2011 at 6:00 AM

    Very creative Aiden!

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  3. Nate LyellNovember 15, 2011 at 5:37 PM

    Derivitives may be applicable when dealing with stocks. You can create an equation that accurately describes the trend of a certain stock and then take the derivitive of it to see the maximum and minimum value of that stock. The derivitive could also help to show the general rate of change for that particular stock.

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  4. Anna SchrammNovember 16, 2011 at 12:46 PM

    Besides stocks, derivatives can be also used in the business world to find when there is a profit of a certain item. The equation for said item will show you the minimum and maximum points, or x-intercepts of the derivative function. These maximum points will show when you have the greatest profit, and the minimum points will show when you have money loss or debt.

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  5. Alicia WhaJung HanNovember 16, 2011 at 6:08 PM

    As you know, derivatives used in our real life like speed change or velocity. The formula will show maximum and minimum speed of the matter. So we can solve the problems and question we have instead of measuring the actual value.

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  6. AnonymousNovember 17, 2011 at 10:05 AM

    Derivatives can be used to find how long a chemical reaction takes to produce resultants. Like in oxygen plus hydrogen goes to water, we can use the derivative of the rate equation to measure how long it will take for a certain percentage of the reactants to be turned into products. This is vital for industrial processes.

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  7. Caroline KangNovember 18, 2011 at 8:06 AM

    Derivative may used in training dog. If trainer wants to train dogs, then f(t), t can be the time of how long trainer trained dog. so f'(x) can be how well dog trained after specific amount of time passed.

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  8. Krista WoodNovember 18, 2011 at 8:23 AM

    Derivatives can be used when you are making a growth chart. If you make marks at regular intervals, they will be more spread out in certain periods and more clustered together in others. You can determine how fast you grew at each interval by taking the derivative with respect to time of how tall you were.

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  9. Ukbin KwonNovember 18, 2011 at 11:02 AM

    sometimes you need to find instant rate of material's number. For example, when you grow bacteria, you need to find instant rate after 7 days, you need to find equation of bacteria and find first derivative of it and plug 7 days of t.

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  10. Alexa SpudieNovember 18, 2011 at 12:57 PM

    As Anna said, you can use derivatives to find the maximum or minimum values of a function, so you could know the maximum profit. Also, as we have already done, you can find the velocity or acceleration functions by taking the first or second derivative of a position function.

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  11. AnonymousNovember 18, 2011 at 11:12 PM

    We live in a world where the derivatives and maximums as well as minimums around us. Last week I want to calculate the maximum benefit ow much I can earn and what's the relationships between shipping fee with quantity , or I want to know how to wane the coasting maximize . I want to shipping something to back China but I have to pay expensive shipping fee, $25 is the origination prize for 2 pd, add $5 per pd that heavier than 2 pd...So I want to know which options is better when shipping alone or together...

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