Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The growth rate of output is the time derivative of the flow of output divided by output itself. The growth rate of the labor force is the time derivative of the labor force divided by the labor force itself. And sometimes there appears a time derivative of a variable which, unlike the examples above, is not measured in units of currency:
Snap, [6] or jounce, [2] is the fourth derivative of the position vector with respect to time, or the rate of change of the jerk with respect to time. [4] Equivalently, it is the second derivative of acceleration or the third derivative of velocity, and is defined by any of the following equivalent expressions: = ȷ = = =.
The higher order derivatives can be applied in physics; for example, while the first derivative of the position of a moving object with respect to time is the object's velocity, how the position changes as time advances, the second derivative is the object's acceleration, how the velocity changes as time advances.
The rate of change is usually with respect to time. Because science and engineering often relate quantities to each other, the methods of related rates have broad applications in these fields. Differentiation with respect to time or one of the other variables requires application of the chain rule, [1] since most problems involve several variables.
This states that differentiation is the reverse process to integration. Differentiation has applications in nearly all quantitative disciplines. In physics, the derivative of the displacement of a moving body with respect to time is the velocity of the body, and the derivative of the velocity with respect to time is acceleration.
The last expression is the second derivative of position (x) with respect to time. On the graph of a function , the second derivative corresponds to the curvature or concavity of the graph. The graph of a function with a positive second derivative is upwardly concave, while the graph of a function with a negative second derivative curves in the ...
Economic examples [ edit ] When campaigning for a second term in office, U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing, which has been noted as "the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection."
If the velocity or positions change non-linearly over time, such as in the example shown in the figure, then differentiation provides the correct solution. Differentiation reduces the time-spans used above to be extremely small ( infinitesimal ) and gives a velocity or acceleration at each point on the graph rather than between a start and end ...