Second Year Calculus

Second Year Calculus

Second Year Calculus: From Celestial Mechanics to Special Relativity covers multi-variable and vector calculus, emphasizing the historical physical problems which gave rise to the concepts of calculus. The book carries us from the birth of the mechanized view of the world in Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in which mathematics becomes the ultimate tool for modelling physical reality, to the dawn of a radically new and often counter-intuitive age in Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity in which it is the mathematical model which suggests new aspects of that reality. The development of this process is discussed from the modern viewpoint of differential forms. Using this concept, the student learns to compute orbits and rocket trajectories, model flows and force fields, and derive the laws of electricity and magnetism. These exercises and observations of mathematical symmetry enable the student to better understand the interaction of physics and mathematics.

Calculus Deconstructed

Calculus Deconstructed is a thorough and mathematically rigorous exposition of single-variable calculus for readers with some previous exposure to calculus techniques but not to methods of proof. This book is appropriate for a beginning Honors Calculus course assuming high school calculus or a "bridge course" using basic analysis to motivate and illustrate mathematical rigor. It can serve as a combination textbook and reference book for individual self-study. Standard topics and techniques in single-variable calculus are presented in context of a coherent logical structure, building on familiar properties of real numbers and teaching methods of proof by example along the way. Numerous examples reinforce both practical and theoretical understanding, and extensive historical notes explore the arguments of the originators of the subject. No previous experience with mathematical proof is assumed: rhetorical strategies and techniques of proof (reductio ad absurdum, induction, contrapositives, etc.) are introduced by example along the way. Between the text and exercises, proofs are available for all the basic results of calculus for functions of one real variable.

Second Year Calculus