Thanks wolf_meister, but I don’t know if that applies to me. I’m so lost I don’t even know what differential calculus is. We are currently learning derivatives and tangent lines. We just finished limits, exponential functions, and a few other things. 6 weeks down, 10 to go.
Gotta say I have this book and love it as well. I read it after having covered the material presented in it, but it is a very well written and interesting book. Check it out.
Also, I’d just like to say that some parts of ‘calculus’ are more daunting than others. I took AP calc in high school, did poorly grade wise but got a 4 on my AP so I got credit for the course at my university. I took calc II as a freshman and did all right until we got to summations, which kicked my a** completely, and I failed the class (of course, not putting the work in didn’t help either). I took calc III the next semester though, and aced it! It was fun and interesting and cool, and didn’t involve many summations, just a lot of vector stuff and double/tripple integrals.
It’s been a while since I’ve done any real math/science (I was both a physics and a math major at points in my college career), but a lot of this stuff is very cool; hopefully you’ll have profs who can help you to appreciate that.
While everyone’s in here saying “screw calc” and stuff, can I add in my own, “Fuck Organic Chemistry!” and fawn over me and tell me that it’s not my fault that I can’t do O-Chem and that I just need a better teacher?
Please, anyone? Is there a Complete Idiot’s Guide to O-Chem?
I agree.
Also, DE was not any harder than integral calc imho.
Calculus can be pretty dry and I can understand why a lot of people don’t enjoy it.
But Physics will change your life!! You’ll understand why the world works the way it does. Go into it with an open mind, and just think of calculus as a tool to let you do the math necessary to understand physics (although you can take a perfectly good physics class that doesn’t require calculus).
I don’t know if you were joking or not, but people would always tell me, “wait till you get to Diffy Q. You’re going to love it.”
I’d go, “well, I know they mean differential equations but what’s the Q”.
For what it’s worth, I thought Diff EQ was the most boring math class I ever took, but I loved Linear Algebra, and eventually Matrix Analysis.
LA has probably been the one class with the most application for my job today. If you know it well, it can make a lot of other subjects a lot easier, including lots of engineering, and even lots of stats and probability.
Stick with it Wesley, even for someone with some math ability and love, calculus was a class I had to put a lot of work into. Studying for tests, just work problems, man. Work every problem in the book that has an answer in the back.
This may indeed be the case. I cannot imagine how anybody could have problems with a field as fine as organic chemistry. Must be the teacher, then.
Deepest sympathies to Wesley Clark, though.
Yeah, its all individual response. Organic chem isn’t that hard to me and I think its an enjoyable subject. But I have heard tons of people say how much they hate organic chemistry too.
Maybe if I read a bunch of those ‘calculus and physics for dummies’ books I can get a handle on things and I wont hate the class as much.
That is so true. 
I was a lousy math student (no surprises to anybody here who has corrected my incorrect calculations the past couple weeks, though that was arithmetic and not mathematics) and have finally reached the point where I am starting to get it. After decades of intimidation by the wording and symbols of calculus I saw an explanation of one calculation (probably in one of those fabulous “How to Use Your Calculator” books that came with Texas Instruments calculators twenty years ago) that caused me to say “Is THAT all it is? Why the fuck didn’t they just SAY so?”
I have your website bookmarked. I’m not letting this defeat me now that I have found the chink in it’s armor.
I have coached many “calculus haters”, and turned them into “calculus lovers”.
Here is the way I have done it, and it has always worked. This is what I do:
1- Sit down with the Calculus Hater (CH) and strike a friendly conversation on what CH loves to do. What does the CH aspire to. What career he/she wants 10 years from now.
2- Help CH to set up a career path to where he/she loves to end up.
3- Then start from the CH’s ultimate objective, and start backing up to TODAY.
4- Pick up an example of the kind of things CH will have to learn to do, so that he/she can achieve his/her ultimate objective.
5- Very clearly and in simple language define a problem that he/she will have to address in real life. First, do this in ordinary language.
6- Then help the CH to translate the ordinary language into a simple mathematical model.
7- Once the mathematical model is described in the form of a set of equations (maybe simple differential equation), then try to get the CH to understand what are the possible ways to solve the problem. What are alternative methods of attack. Do not use any formulas nor any methods described in textbooks to solve the equations. Do it in a long-winded simple manner, using ordinary numbers to show why certain approaches work, and why other approaches do not work. NEVER USE esoteric mathematical formulas.
8- Throughout all of this, emphasize why we are trying to solve the problem. Keep on relating the solution to the ultimate desire and objective of the CH for his/her future plans and life. Show the CH how his life could depend on solving that problem.
Oooh. You have no idea how easily the simple 8 steps above, if done patiently and enthusiastically with care, can turn a CH to a Calculus Lover.
Physics is math, and chemistry is physics, but most of the math majors I know *hate * chemistry and tolerate physics.
[Quote]
Originally posted by Wesley Clark
*…my 400 level course is Inorganic Chemistry. The instructor is a really good guy and the class is not too bad. I’m not worried about biochem (483) because I hear its a total joke. *
I loved that class! For some reason, we have two inorganic classes (410 and 411). I took them both, but can’t figure out why there were two of them. Oh, well, I didn’t mind taking the same class twice. 
I’m a chemistry major in my last semestre. Right now I’m only taking senior synthesis lab and electro, and I graduate December 18th. I don’t really hate it, but I was posting that after spending 15 hours in the chemistry building in a row (though I ran across the street to get lunch for a bit), which is the norm for our class. Spending such a huge amount of one’s time on something so frustrating will only…frustrate one. Also, since I am planning to be a pharmacist I know that the past two years of my educational life were completely pointless and will never be used again. Now, math and physics, I will always love.
Astroboy14, awesome story!
threemae, I am an O Chem tutor and I can honestly tell you that almost everyone who comes in to be tutored is there because they’re not getting an adequate explanation in class. The rest are there because they don’t go to class, but I digress. I am not sure about an Idiot’s Guide, but I will look it up for you. If you don’t use McMurray’s Organic Chemistry, consult it as a resource. If you have questions, attend office hours, visit TAs and find a tutor if need be. It’s not as difficult as other chemistry classes, being more qualitative than most, but it’s still pretty hard.
Hmmmm, I really hated Chemistry. It seems like they’d always tell you a rule and give million exceptions to the rule that you had to memorize. Math at least follows the rules.
Ok, here was my secret to really getting Calculus: I dropped the course. No, really. For some reason, I just didn’t get it when I first took. Something about the concept just didn’t sink in. (BTW, I had the same weird stumbling block for vectors but I got those quicker.) So near the end of the semester, I dropped it and then took it again next semester. It was sooooo much easier and I could really try to understand the concepts since it wasn’t so completely new to me.
Wesley Clark, if you understand Orgo but not calculus, your brain is foreign territory to me. Nonetheless, I’ll offer a few crumbs of wisdom. “Differentiation” and “differential” calculus refer to taking the “derivative.” The language is completely counter-intuitive. I recommend not taking differential equations until you’ve aced linear algebra, since so many DiffEQ courses deal with using matrices (linear algebra) to solve sets of differential equations. Linear algebra was a cake walk for me, and calculus used to vex me until I just sort of… understood it one day.
[sup]dy[/sup]/[sub]dx[/sub] : this is the same as “amount of change in y divided by amount of change in x” (or “rise over run”) for a pair of very small changes. The idea being that the tinier your measurements get, the more precise your answer will be. Occasionally you’ll just see [sup]d[/sup]/[sub]dx[/sub] and an equation. That’s a horribly confusing way of saying “the derivative with respect to x of the equation.” It would be much cleaner for a new student to see y= {something hideous involving x}, and then an instruction to “find [sup]dy[/sup]/[sub]dx[/sub] and express its value in terms of x.”
Anywhere you see dx you’re looking at a “differential” which I always remembered with the mnemonic “dx is so bloody small that it hardly makes a difference at all.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the standard procedure, the one followed by people who wish to pass the first time they take the class for credit (and Wes has the right attitude toward his grade in the class–a C- means he doesn’t have to take it over–though I thought a D would suffice), is to AUDIT nasty courses like Calculus or Organic Chemistry one semester and take it for credit the next?
Books are good, but I find the Internet a wealth of information on mathmatics. The best bet is to find 5 sites that explain a formula, equation, or method of doing something, and compare them. After about 3-4 different explanations (assuming they all explain it a bit differently) the brain finds the pattern, and it all comes together to make complete sense. Then go back to the way the teacher explained it and wonder to yourself why you didn’t get it when he explained it. Of course, YMMV.
Here are a handful of sites on caculus- curtesy of google.
http://www.calculus.org/
http://www.math.temple.edu/~cow/
http://www.calculus.net/ci2/?tag=
http://www.sosmath.com/calculus/calculus.html
http://www.math.hmc.edu/calculus/tutorials/
Some of these sites have sample quizes and problems that are generated. I personally run into problems that I need much more practice on than my textbook offers. Hope this helps some.
Hi, Wesley. I haven’t been able to sleep all night since I read this thread and saw your plea for help. I’ve just been thinking up ways to help you love calculus. I, too, am a chemistry buff, but I find calculus very elegant and a wonderful tool for helping us describe the world around us, and I want everyone to share my love of the subject. (I do the same for chemistry - posters like tremorviolet and fishcheer15 make me want to go into “teacher” mode grins)
So I’d like to address your questions here in a more descriptive, example-giving manner:
As Jurph has already explained, differentiation is the process of finding the derivative of an equation. That’s all terribly abstract; let’s look at it in terms of a real-life example, one that you’ll be dealing with specifically in physics. If I take this too slow for you, I don’t mean to insult you - I don’t know how much you know about physics so I want to be absolutely sure I explain it well. 'K?
First things first: grab yourself a piece of paper and a pencil, and draw for me a hill. This will be our function. Put the very start of your hill at the origin, and draw in the positive x and y axes.
Label your x axis “time” and your y axis “velocity”. This is a graph of your car’s velocity over, say, a road trip.
In case you’re not really familiar with exactly what velocity is, it is the speed with which you move, and it has both a magnitude (a number: 30 miles per hour, 60 metres per second, whatever) and a direction (forward, backwards). You can calculate it yourself by dividing the distance you travel by the time it takes you to travel that far - this is an average velocity.
Back to the graph: a tangent line is a line that touches the curve on only one point in a localised area. The easiest place to start drawing your tangent lines is at the very peak of your hill, where the curve flattens out and then starts to descend. Draw a dot at the very topmost part of your curve. The tangent line there goes horizontally through that dot. It never crosses over any other part of the curve.
Now draw a dot somewhere on the “uphill” portion of your hill. The tangent line here is going to pass through that dot. Depending on how you drew your hill, it MAY pass through other points of the curve far away from the dot, but it shouldn’t touch the curve anywhere else in the immediate area of your dot. Try drawing in your tangent line there, maybe make it short - a couple centimetres or so.
So, that’s a tangent line. Big deal, huh?
The slope of that tangent line defines your instantaneous acceleration at that point. Just to make sure you know what I’m talking about, we’ll define acceleration. Acceleration is the rate at which your speed increases - gravity is a type of acceleration, it is a force which causes a falling object’s speed to increase by 9.8 metres per second each second. You can calculate average acceleration by dividing your change in velocity by time; that will give you the average acceleration you used over your whole car trip.
Instantaneous velocity is like if we froze time and just wanted to study the forces acting upon your car at that moment. It’s not easy to calculate without calculus.
Anyway - you can look at your tangent line and guess at its slope. That gives you the instantaneous acceleration at that point in your trip only. If you wanted to find your instantaneous acceleration 10 minutes later, you’d have to draw another tangent line and find its curve.
Or, you could take the derivative of whatever mathematical function defines your velocity curve. This will give you an equation that can be used to calculate the instantaneous acceleration at any point on your curve, just by plugging in your (x,y) coordinates. So, the derivative of a function describes the slopes of the tangent lines to that function.
Physicists describe velocity as v = at when an object starts at rest and then begins to move. The “a” is acceleration, and we pretend it is a constant for the purposes of differentiating the equation; the “t” is time, our independent variable. The derivative of velocity would then be:
dv/dt = a [(d/dt) t]
since the derivative of t = 1,
dv/dt = a.
This proves mathematically what I said above.
There is a similar relationship between distance travelled (displacement) and velocity. Distance travelled is usually represented by the equation:
s = ut + 1/2 at[sup]2[/sup]
In this equation “u” is the initial velocity. Let’s assume it’s zero, so we have the same situation as above: an object at rest, being acted upon by a force (acceleration) that makes it move. If u = 0, then the equation is basically
s = 1/2 at[sup]2[/sup]
Again, a is a constant for the purposes of differentiation, so we get this:
ds/dt = 1/2 a [(d/dt) t[sup]2[/sup]]
And since the derivative of t[sup]2[/sup] = 2t,
ds/dt = (1/2 a)(2t)
or ds/dt = at
That’s our velocity equation as defined above!
I hope this explanation was able to help you in some way, at least to give you an idea of how these strange things you’re doing actually fit into the real world. Again, my apologies if I went too slow. 
Funny, I had the opposite experience of Wesley Clark. In highschool I used to find physics frustrating because we had to memorize a lot of equations, and I hated memorizing stuff that seemed to be pulled out of the ether, so to speak. It just wouldn’t stick. One day, my dad showed me how to derive some equations from others using calculus. Hooray! They finally made sense. Memorizing just a few things and figuring out the others was so much easier for me.
On the other hand, my example is also about having context for concepts that makes them easier and more enjoyable to learn. Mine was just a different sort of context.
dropzone
Thanks for the compliments about that webpage.
Yes I really despise the way people express themselves in such obscure ways to make a simple idea seem much more complex than it is.
Some time ago, a newspaper article mentioned a web designer building a customer’s site that would (based on a person’s Internet surfing preferences) display items in which that person would be interested. Did the web designer say “this site will display things he might like” ? Oh no !!! He called his web design a “contextually guided merchandise experience”. :rolleyes:
Another book worth checking out, as a supplement: How to Ace Calculus.
And I haven’t read either of these, but they look interesting:
Calculus and Pizza
Calculus for Cats
Wesley, you might try asking particular questions at this math message board. I post there myself from time to time, answering questions (also under the name of Cabbage).
Of course, you could try doing the same thing here as well, but you may get a better response over there since it’s specifically for math discussions. One thing, if you do ask questions there, the important thing is to communicate. Don’t just ask people to do your work for you–explain what you yourself are thinking about a particular problem or just some general question–it’s much easier to help someone from that approach.
Calculus, for me, really is very “visual” subject. With the right teacher, it should be quite easy to visualize what’s going on. I will mention that I’ve taught calculus several times, and over and over again the most common problem I see in poor students is that they have a weak understanding of algebra. If you’re weak in that, going back and mastering the basics will go a long way towards helping you with calculus.