justcalculus

Multivariable calculus notes, slideshows, and explorations

Blog

Optimal cake under a cone

Can You Bake the Optimal Cake Using Calculus?

August 27, 2016
Solving FiveThirtyEight's Riddler: maximize the volume of a three-tiered cake that fits inside a cone using multivariable calculus.
Lampshade casting hyperbolic shadow

Does a Lampshade Cast a Hyperbolic Shadow?

September 17, 2016
Using parametric plotting and Mathematica to prove that the shadow a lampshade casts on a wall is a pair of hyperbolas.
Rolling shutter effect animation on a spinning propeller

Modeling the Rolling Shutter Effect

Posted on Wolfram Community
Using Mathematica to simulate how a rolling shutter distorts a spinning propeller, from polar plots to contour plots to animated distortion.
Riemann sphere on the complex plane with stereographic projection

The Riemann Sphere as a Stereographic Projection

Wolfram Demonstrations Project (2013)
Visualizing stereographic projection and the extended complex plane with an interactive Wolfram Demonstration.
Elliptic curve with torsion order 8 and group law lines

Parameterized Families of Elliptic Curves with Large Rational Torsion Subgroups

Wolfram Demonstrations Project (2015)
Exploring one-parameter families of elliptic curves with rational torsion points of order 4 through 12, with an interactive Wolfram Demonstration.

Lecture Notes

All 13 lessons are available as interactive HTML5 slideshows, downloadable PDFs, or video lectures. Topics range from parametric plotting through Stokes' Theorem.

Slideshows PDFs Videos