MATH 1501: WEEK 5

Topics for this week are:

• Rates of change
• The chain rule
• Differentiation of trigonometric functions

Text coverage:     Section 3.4 - 3.6 of Salas, Hille, and Etgen

Online resources:

• Online notes
  • Some applications.
• Maple worksheets
  • Slopes, Tangent Lines, and Derivatives: This worksheet gives animated visualization for the computation and role of a tangent line. The worksheet is appropriate at an early stage in a study of differential calculus.
  • Reflections on Differentiation: This worksheet is designed to introduce how to differentiate both functions and expressions. The problem of finding extreme values of simple functions is illustrated by using Fermat's Principle to find the path of reflected light. Some fancier plotting capabilities and also the equation solving ability of Maple are also introduced.
• Java Projects
  • Tangent lines to graphs of a single variable: This applet is designed for experimenting with tangent lines and the linear approximation to a function.
  • Secant lines and their relation to tangent lines for graphs of a single variable: This applet is designed for experimenting with secant lines and the secant line approximation to the tangent.

---

Last Modified: . School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology.