Sunday, April 24, 2016

Reflection 10

Calculus makes its way into the news in subtle but noticeable ways; in the article, an example is provided explaining how the ozone may be healing itself because the amount of ozone damaging chemicals in the air is lowering. The article, however, appeared to confuse the idea of "amount of damaging pollutants" with "the rate that damaging pollutants are being placed into the air". The amount of pollutants are not depleting, however, the rate of increase is decreasing and leveling off, which is regardless good news, though it'd be better to hear that the ozone was actually healing itself and not taking lighter punches.

This idea of rate relates to our derivatives. The derivative, if graphed, was likely increasing rather quickly, and as it hit 1989 it began leveling out toward a slope of 1. If things keep going well this way, the graph will hopefully become concave down as the rate of pollutants produced becomes negative (i.e. pollutants being taken out of the air) and the slope takes on an increasingly negative rate until the ozone is once again completely intact.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/flint-home-posts-highest-lead-reading-ever-672191555650

This article and many others like it detail the environmental catastrophe of Flint, Michigan, where water quality is being destroyed. In this article, lead was found to be twice the previous record found in tap water. Though there isn't a whole lot of "calculus" to this statement, there is calculus to the story; the amount of lead in water should be below a certain point (below a "carrying capacity"), the rate of change of water pollutants indicates the pollution levels of the new water source (due to the sudden increase in pollutants coinciding with fracking), and the rate of change needs to be negative in order for the water to be cleaner.

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