Mathematica Activities for Teaching Calculus

Listed below are several Mathematica-based computer labs I designed and used in my accelerated calculus courses while a graduate student instructor at Vanderbilt University (1999-2002). To view the files marked (.nb) below, you need either Mathematica or MathReader, the latter available for free download.

• Volumes of Solids of Revolution
  
  I designed this lab to help my calculus students visualize the process of rotating the area between two functions around an axis to generate a solid of revolution. The Mathematica notebook features animations of such rotations.
  
  Lab Instructions
  Mathematica Notebook (.nb)
  
  
• Parametric and Polar Curves
  
  This lab was designed to help my calculus students develop some intuition about the graphs of curves given in parametric or polar form. Included in the Mathematica notebooks are routines for animating the graphing of such curves.
  
  Lab Instructions
  Mathematica Notebook: Parametric (.nb)
  Mathematica Notebook: Polar (.nb)
  
  
• The Tangent Problem
  
  This Mathematica lab is a self-paced tutorial on the tangent line problem, featuring an animation of the secant line limiting process.
  
  Mathematica Notebook (.nb)
  
  
• The Velocity Problem, The Derivative, and the Derivative as a Function
  
  This lab is a three-part follow-up to the Tangent Problem lab. The lab uses Mathematica to expedite computations in order to build conceptual understanding through trial and error. It also draws on Mathematica's plotting ability to illustrate the graphical connection between a function and its derivative.
  
  Mathematica Notebook (.nb)
  

Page maintained by Derek Bruff (derek.bruff [at] vanderbilt.edu).

Last updated September 3, 2006.

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