Talking to people who use maths in their work. Aiming to encourage further uptake of maths at A-level and beyond. brought to you by the Further Maths Support Programme. The FMSP supports students and teachers in England with mathematics, and you can find out more at furthermaths.org.uk. Hosts: Peter Rowlett (Nottingham Trent University) and Katie Steckles.
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Talking to people who use maths in their work. Aiming to encourage further uptake of maths at A-level and beyond. brought to you by the Further Maths Support Programme. The FMSP supports students and teachers in England with mathematics, and you can find out more at furthermaths.org.uk. Hosts: Peter Rowlett (Nottingham Trent University) and Katie Steckles.
This week the topic was calculus and differentiation. We talked to Florencia Tettamanti, who’s a mathematician working on fluid dynamics. We talked about how Flo uses calculus to study the motion of fluids like air and water, and what it’s like to be a research mathematician. Interesting links: Basic differentiation, at s-cool Differential equations, at the University of Surrey website Fluid dynamics on Wikipedia NSF videos on Fluid Mechanics - YouTube playlist Puzzle: If your function is given by y = x2 - 6x + 13, what is the minimum value of y, and for which value of x does the function give this value? Solution: If you plot the points x=1, x=2, x=3 and x=4 you can clearly see the curve of this graph and that it seems to have a maximum at x=3, for which the value of y is 4. To see what the graph looks like, you can input the equation into Wolfram Alpha. Another way to see this is to rearrange the equation: x2-6x+13 = (x-3)2+4, and by examining this equation we can see that this is just an x graph, shifted across by 3 and up by 4, so its turning point and hence the minimum will be at x=3 and y=4. If you know how to use calculus, you can find the turning point more easily - if you differentiate x2-6x+13 you get 2x - 6, which will equal zero when x=3, and putting this value back into the original equation gives y=4. Show/Hide
Taking Maths Further Podcast
Talking to people who use maths in their work. Aiming to encourage further uptake of maths at A-level and beyond. brought to you by the Further Maths Support Programme. The FMSP supports students and teachers in England with mathematics, and you can find out more at furthermaths.org.uk. Hosts: Peter Rowlett (Nottingham Trent University) and Katie Steckles.
