Integral Calculus
What Is Integration?
Integration is just:
👉 Adding tiny pieces together to get the whole.
That’s it.
Not demons.
Not wizard math.
Just adding small bits.
Imagine This Example
You have a bucket.
Someone pours water into it very slowly, drop by drop.
You want to know:
How much water is inside after some time?
You can’t count each drop one by one — too many.
So you add all the tiny drops together.
That “adding small, small pieces” is integration.
See It Another Way
Imagine you’re painting a wall with tiny dots
Each dot is small, but together they fill the whole wall.
Integration = adding all the dots.
How Is Integration Connected to Differentiation?
Differentiation breaks things into tiny pieces (rates).
Integration puts tiny pieces back together.
Differentiation = breaking
Integration = rebuilding
They’re opposites — like tying and untying shoelaces.
The Symbol for Integration
That long S-shaped symbol ∫ means:
“Sum up everything.”
Differentiation helps us describe how fast something is changing (rate of change). Anti-differentiation (integration) helps us find the original quantity or the total accumulated amount from that rate.
So, if differentiation answers “How fast is it changing?”,
Anti-differentiation (Integration) answers
“How much has changed in total?” and “What original function produced this rate?”
Meaning of Anti-differentiation
If a function F(x) is such that
then F(x) is an antiderivative of f(x).
We write the indefinite integral as:
where C is the constant of integration.
Why do we add C?
Because many different functions have the same derivative.
For instance,
and
So the antiderivative of 2x is .
Basic Rules (Indefinite Integrals)
1. Power Rule
Add 1 to the power
Divide by the new power
Add + C
2. Constant Multiple Rule
3. Sum/Difference Rule
4. Important Special Case
Definite Integrals and Total Accumulation
This is the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. It gives the total accumulated amount of f(x) from a to b. In many cases, it also represents area under the curve, but the “area” can mean real scientific quantities.
Uses of Integration
Integration helps to:
find area under curves
find distance traveled
calculate volume
solve physics problems
Example 1
Evaluate:
Solution
Example 2
Evaluate:
Solution
Example 3
Solution:
Example 4
Evaluate
Solution
Example 5
Solution
Example 6
Solution
Example 7
Find the area under the curve
Solution
Example 8
A particle moves with velocity
Solution
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