What is an integral?

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I’m in CalcII now and for the life of me cannot wrap my head around integrals. Now we are using things like u-Substitution methods and solving the areas between 2 curves. I can understand how the equations work, but not why because I still cannot picture what an integral is or why it’s important.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You’re driving your car at 50km/h. You drive for one hour. What distance did you drive?

You’re driving your car at 40km/h. You drive for thirty minutes. Then you speed up to 50km/h, and drive for another thirty minutes. What distance did you drive this time?

(many steps later)

You’re driving your car at 40km/h. You drive for one milisecond. Then you speed up to 40.0001km/h, and drive for another milisecond. Then you speed up to… etc etc etc etc. What about _this_ time, what distance did you drive?

In the limit, as you approach an infinite number of infinitesimally small time slices, that’s the integral of speed over time.

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