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Beyond velocity and acceleration: jerk, snap and higher derivatives (2016)

(iopscience.iop.org)
181 points EndXA | 1 comments | 19 Jun 24 10:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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marginalia_nu ◴[19 Jun 24 11:14 UTC] No.40727129[source]▶
Do these higher order derivatives say anything meaningful?

I always got the sense from physics that outside of purely mathematical constructions such as Taylor series, higher order time derivatives aren't providing much interesting information. Though I'm not sure whether this is the inherent laziness of physicist math[1] or a property of the forces in nature.

[1] since e^x = 1 + x is generally true, why'd you even need a second order derivative

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glitchc ◴[19 Jun 24 13:31 UTC] No.40728112[source]▶
> [1] since e^x = 1 + x is generally true, why'd you even need a second order derivative

Only true for small x (less than 1).

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1. marginalia_nu ◴[19 Jun 24 22:38 UTC] No.40733149[source]▶
The joke is that physicists aren't always rigorous enough to add that caveat.