If you can take an infinite number of derivatives of position, then why is it so hard to visualize/think of real world examples beyond the jerk? Does the function essentially become meaningless to the physical world?

Question

If you can take an infinite number of derivatives of position, then why is it so hard to visualize/think of real world examples beyond the jerk? Does the function essentially become meaningless to the physical world?

In: 0

Answer 1

It’s just rate of change.

Rate of change of position is speed.

Rate of change of speed is acceleration.

Rate of change of acceleration is jerk.

Rate of change of jerk … you can see that, but it’s on the order of microseconds even for contrived examples. You can give it a name, and then look for rate of change of that.

Basically, at some point, it just becomes a rate of change you don’t care about, and becomes harder to see, harder to measure and harder to assign some kind of analogy too.

Same way that you can do multiple dimensions but at some point they’re still there but their physical analogy is just irrelevant to you because you don’t really “sense” or deal with them in the physical world you live in.