I found it somewhat difficult to create and maintain the blog for this class. First starting off I was not sure which website would be the best to use, so I went through a lot of them and picked Weebly. I think it might be better to have everyone use the same website so it is not confusing when commenting. For some reason on my page, I couldn't figure out how to let people comment on my site so I didn't get any comments. Having a blog was useful for me to get to know how to use blogs and the internet better. This was my first blog and it was kind of hard to know where to place everything. Through this experience, I will be at least a little bit better at using blog websites.
When I did the Calculus in the Real World part of the blog I felt like it kind of actually made sense why we were doing all this math. In the past I have sometimes ask myself, why am I doing this math? I wont have to do this when I actually get into the real world. Except, I want to do something in the medical field so it would be difficult to get around without doing math along the way. This helped me gain perspective about math.
The You Tube project was somewhat fun in the fact that you got to come up with your own problem and have whatever you want to be in the problem. The bad part was that you actually had to make a video doing it. I personally did not want to be the voice of the video just because I don't like how my voice sounds recorded. We did our problem the Office themed so we added in little details from the office into our video. This was my first time making a video, but my group members were good and helped in the process.
I personally did not like the online part of this course. It was hard to remember that I had to do a blog online for math. It was not particularly hard so it was not that bad at all. This was the first time I had to do something continually online for a course in school. I thought the prompts themselves were good for the module! I think the amount of modules were good and definitely not overwhelming.
It was difficult to comment on my peers blogs because sometimes they would not approve the comments if they had to and sometimes I would not get credit for commenting. I think a better system would be to try and comment on other peoples pages but if that does not work maybe have students email you their comments so that everyone gets credit. My page did not have a space where people could comment and that was somewhat of an issue but if you do the email system, if peoples comment page is not working students can still comment.
Calculus is used in the real world in various fields of employment. People that major in engineering, medical sciences, physics, or statistics use calculus everyday in their jobs. For example, a person who was interested in medical sciences would need to do labs would need knowledge on certain formulas and equations in order to do their calculations. An example of a specific scenario would be a biologist who would use differential calculus to determine of growth rate in a bacterial culture when certain variables of the experiment are changed such as temperature. I really enjoy science and am thinking about going into the medical field. I knew that math and science go hand and hand but it honestly never really clicked with me that when I was doing a lab in biology or chemistry that I was doing math. Another real world application would be an engineer using integration calculus to determine the amount of necessary materials to construct something curved shape and to measure the weight of the structure. Also it would be necessary to find the area of something in engineering so that is commonly used in everyday life.
Example 1: If there are 200 bacteria after 2 hours and 800 bacteria after 5 hours, how many bacteria were present initially? After how many hours will the bacteria be 50,000?
Solution: y=Ce^kt 200= Ce^2k ; C=200/e^2k 800=Ce^5k ; C=800/e^5k Set C's together and cross multiply to solve for k 200/e^2k=800/e^5k ; 200e^5k=800e^2k ; e^5k=4e^2k ; ln(e^5k)= ln(4e^2k)
Example 2: Find the length and width of a rectangle with the perimeter of 160 meters and a maximum area.
Solution: 2x+2y=160; 2y=160-2x; y=80-x
Then, substitute and take the derivative of the area, and set equal to zero: A=xy ; S=x(80-x) =80x-x^2 ; dA/dx=80-2x
80-2x=0; 80=2x; x=40 y=80, x=40
length should be 40 meters, and width should be 40 meters
I am taking applied calculus because I want to make sure I am prepared for math courses in college and to develop my math skills. I hope to get a B- or better in this class. I am going to try to learn as much as I can in this class because it is important to have a solid background in math before heading off to college. Math is not my favorite subjects, but it is definitely better than history. Some things I do enjoy include playing tennis, hiking, skiing, and running. I really enjoy playing most sports in general such as soccer and basketball. This year I decided to do cross country in order to get in better shape for tennis.