MathDL - The MAA Mathematical Sciences Digital Library
Search

Search Loci: Resources:

Keyword

  Advanced Search
The Mathematical Association of America
The National Science Digital Library Project
The National Science Foundation
Register Sign In

Loci: Resources

Area from Hand-Drawn Functions

by Daniel Gries (Hopkins School)

Overview

Draw your own function on the upper axes by clicking on the screen and dragging the mouse to set y-coordinates of points to be smoothly connected. The applet will show (on the lower axes) the antiderivative function resulting from the definite integral from a to x of your function. Since the points a and x are draggable (on both sets of axes), there are a wide range of explorations possible. Note that to emphasize the "antiderivative connection", the user has the option to show a tangent line at x on the lower graph to see directly the connection between its slope and the values of the upper function.

This applet requires the free Flash Player 9 browser plug-in available from Adobe.

/images/cms_upload/integralsketch18835.jpg

Open the Integral Sketch applet in a separate window

Gries, Daniel, "Area from Hand-Drawn Functions," Loci (July 2008), DOI: 10.4169/loci002640



Discuss this article

Be the first to start a discussion about this article.

start a new discussion thread

MathDL Homepage MathDL Homepage National Science Digital Library The Mathematical Association of America