Quote:
Originally Posted by pfreivald
Hooray!
Pro-tip: if your students don't yet know calculus, approximate the curve with a trapezoid (or several) to teach them the *idea* of calculus, and of using unit analysis on axes to determine the physical quantities yielded by integration.
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Yup.
This method is actually how a great deal of engineering calcs are done. Before I knew what I was doing, I brute forced a lot of calculations this way after being inspired by JVN using the method in his drive design calc. Later one I learned better ways to do some calcs, but a lot are still easier to do numerically.
With excel's easy method of repeating formulas, it can be done with plenty precision using small timesteps.
Euler's Method is the simplest (could be wrong...), but there are other methods that can get a lot better, especially if the curve changes direction a lot.