Quick Notes

Two quick notes:

First, I’ve added a new page with activities and explorations I have collected and used with students and in my summer institutes. Some are formatted as handouts (a/k/a worksheets) and others are black line masters for game type activities. You can find them under the “Resources” tab on the top line menu (direct link). I will be looking through my files for more, so check back now and then. Hope you find them helpful.

Second: last year I reviewed an iPad app called A Little Calculus. This app demonstrates graphically nearly all the concepts of AB and BC Calculus. It is quite easy to use and a quick way to prepare and present good visual examples for your class. Your students may also use it to explore on their own or with directions from you. The app has recently been updated to allow you to save and recall your own examples. This is a helpful improvement allowing you to prepare things in advance or reuse set-ups in later classes. Also, two new topics have been added – Logistic Growth and the Derivative of Exponential Functions. If you are not familiar with it, take a look.

…but what does it look like?

It will soon be time to teach about finding the volumes of solid figures using integration techniques. Here is a list of links to posts that will help your students what these figures look like and how they are generated.

Visualizing Solid Figures 1 Here are ideas for making physical models of solid figures. These make good projects for students.

A Little Calculus is an iPad app that does an excellent job in helping students visualize many of the concepts of the calculus. Volumes with regular cross section, disk method, washer method, cylindrical shells are all illustrated.

The first illustrations show square cross sections on a semicircular base. The base is in the lower part and the solid in the upper. By using the plus and minus button (lower right) you can increase or decrease the number of sections in real time and see the figures change. The upper figure may be rotated by moving your finger on the screen.

The illustration below shows a washer situation.

The following older posts show how to use Winplot to generate and explore solid figures. Unfortunately, Winplot seems to have gone out of favor. I’m not sure why; it is one of the best. I still use it and like it. You may download Winplot here for free (PC only).

Visualizing Solid Figures 2 This post demonstrates how to use Winplot to generate solids with regular cross sections and solids of rotation.

Visualizing Solid Figures 3 The washer method is illustrated using Winplot. These post all relate to finding volumes by washers: Subtract the Hole from the Whole and Does Simplifying Make Things Simpler?

Visualizing Solid Figures 4 Using Winplot to see the method cylindrical shells. Note that this method is not tested on either the AB or BC Calculus exams, so you do not have to teach it. Many teachers present this topic after the exams are given. As a footnote you may also find Why You Never Need Cylindrical Shells interesting. (However, this is not the reason it is not tested on the AP Calculus exams.)

Visualizing Solid Figures 5 An exercise demonstrating how “half” can mean different things and shows that how the figures are generated makes a difference.

“A Little Calculus”

A Little Calculus is an app for iPad and iPhones. While I don’t usually do product reviews, I think this one is so good that I am making an exception.

There are many good websites that illustrate calculus concepts. Many of them, however, do not allow teachers to enter their own examples; they must use the built-in ones. A Little Calculus is an exception.

Continuity

Karl Weierstrass (1815 – 1897) was the mathematician who (finally) formalized the definition of continuity. Included in that definition was the epsilon-delta definition of limit. This definition has been pulled out, so to speak, and now is usually presented on its own. So, which came first – continuity or limit? The ideas and situations that required continuity could only be formalized with the concept of limit. So, looking at functions that are or are not continuous helps us understand what limits are and why we first need them.

In the ideal world, students would have plenty of work with continuous and not continuous functions before starting the calculus. The vocabulary and notation, if not the formal definitions, would be used as early as possible. Then when students got to calculus, they would know the ideas and be ready to formalize the ideas.

The Intermediate Value Theorem (IVT) is an important property of continuous functions.

Using the definition of continuity to show that a function is or is not continuous at a point is a common question of the AP exams, as is the IVT.

Continuity The definition of continuity.

Continuity Should continuity come before limits?

From One Side or the Other One-sided limits and one-sided differentiability

How to Tell Your Asymptote from a Hole in the Graph  From the technology series. Showing holes and asymptotes on a graphing calculator.

Fun with Continuity Defined everywhere and continuous nowhere. Continuous only at a single point.

Theorems The Intermediate Value Theorem (IVT) and suggestions on teaching theorems.

Intermediate Weather  Using the IVT

Right Answer – Wrong Question Continuity or continuity “on its domain”?

Revised from a post of August 22, 2017