Imagine cutting a hot dog into disclike slices. You could wind up with ten sections half an inch thick or a thousand paper-thin slices. But however thin you sliced it, you could, presumably, reassemble the pieces back into a hot dog. Integral calculus, as this branch of mathematics is called, adopts the strategy of taking an infinite number of infinitesimally thin slices and generating mathematical expressions for putting them back together again—for making them whole, or “integral.” This powerful additive process can be used to determine the drag force buffeting a wing as it slices through
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