this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Science Memes
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Possibly you just had to hear it more than once.
I learned it the other way around since my physics teacher was speedrunning the math sections to get to the fun physics stuff and I really got it after hearing it the second time in math class.
But yeah: it often helps to have practical examples and it doesn't get any more applicable to real life than d/dt.
I always needed practical examples, which is why it was helpful to learn physics alongside calculus my senior year in high school. Knowing where the physics equations came from was easier than just blindly memorizing the formulas.
The specific example of things clicking for me was understanding where the "1/2" came from in distance = 1/2 (acceleration)(time)^2 (the simpler case of initial velocity being 0).
And then later on, complex numbers didn't make any sense to me until phase angles in AC circuits showed me a practical application, and vector calculus didn't make sense to me until I had to actually work out practical applications of Maxwell's equations.