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oscillations and waves


Eternalx

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Would agree to this. It's much easier to get the oscillations and waves after you have finished differentiation in circular functions. Else, read the study guide if you have one. That was enough in my case. :)

According to what people tell me, a lot of things in physics get easier when you konw calculus.

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According to what people tell me, a lot of things in physics get easier when you konw calculus.

Completely agreeing to this. Even mechanics is easier after you've done differentiation and integration. (The usefulness of calculus in oscillations and waves was already discussed above.) I think even that the section calculus was actually "invented" or "investigated" by Newton just to solve the physics problems.

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I didn't find that :)

And this is after doing IB Math and 2 university calculus courses.

It's very true.

For SHM, velocity is the rate of change of distance and acceleration is the rate of change of velocity. This allows you to derive the formulae for force, maximum acceleration, maximum speed, the spring constant, etc. without memorizing anything.

For gravitation, gravitational potential is the integral of gravitational force (Ie. work), before calc, I never understood why the inverse square law suddenly became the inverse law for V.

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Basic mechanics does become a lot easier when you start applying what you've learned about derivatives and integrals into the stuff you know. However, IB seems to be very anti calculus in Physics even at HL, which really is a shame.

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