PHYS 2211 Chapter Notes - Chapter Episode 7 and 8: Black Death, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, The Mechanical Universe
Document Summary
Episode 7 and 8 / integration, the apple and the moon / cal-tech: the mechanical universe. In the 17th century a mathematic technique called integration was developed to calculate the area under curves. Newton was actually from a farming family, and his mother quickly concluded that newton wasn"t going to be a very good farmer. Leibniz both independently developed calculus in the 17th century. Newton and leibniz where very different individuals, newton was more concerned with theory while leibniz strived for practical application. Leibniz actually developed a portable mechanical calculator capable of calculating square roots. That being said, scientist and philosophers before these two, first set the foundation for the creation of calculus. Even before that, geometry had to be developed to create the fundamentals necessary to express calculus. The area of a rectangle can be calculated by base times height, and a triangle with the same base and height has the area of half that of the rectangle.
