Thursday, October 08, 2020

ax^2 + bx + c

The phone buzzes, providing a necessary distraction from the tedium of another online meeting (a parallel pandemic in these Covid times).

It was a whatsapp forward!



For some odd reason, instead of focusing on the joke, decided to attempt the problem asked by Ms. Bethanie. The mind jogged back to days of engineering preparation, using integral calculus to solve the area bounded by curves. After managing to correctly remember the rules of integration, found myself staring at an equation. And came to realization that the limits were missing.

The attempt to get the limits/intersection points ended up in a quadratic equation. And howsoever much I wracked my brains, had no recollection of the formula for calculating the roots of a quadratic equation! And as with most small issues Google came to the help it and I reconnected with an old friend. 


Pic – roots of a quadratic equation 
Roots of a Quadratic Equation derivation

Realized that this particular equation could not be solved as the parabola and the line do not intersect. Hence the area bound is zero (or infinity), depending on how you look at it! (Link)




But what happened to the simple formula of quadratic equations which was a constant companion in those years of struggle - for admission to an engineering college and during engineering days. I know it has been a while but how could something just slip off (I could remember the integration part)

Most of the formulae, derivations and theorems which had been hammered in as a student has been so rarely used that they have been forgotten. Wonder what kind of commentary this is about our higher education! Or maybe forgetting the quadratic equation roots is symbolic of how disconnected we are becoming with our roots.

Hopefully the roots of the quadratic equation are now firmly back in place inside the brain. It was good to go back (with a little help from the omniscient google) to these problems instead of the real-world ones

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