Math Seminar: An Introduction to Elliptic Integrals

March 14, 2016

Tuesday, April 19 from 11:00 – 11:45 a.m.; Whitman 183 (CAMS)
Professor Gerald Flynn will present “The Perimeter of an Ellipse and an Introduction to Elliptic Integrals.” All interested students and faculty are welcome.

The abstract of the talk is as follows: “This presentation starts with a curious formula found in a 1940’s-era text in Engineering Mathematics. This “approximate” formula is offered without any explanation or justification. We explore a derivation of this formula and then address the question of how good an approximation this is. This question is answered first numerically and then analytically. The analysis leads eventually to one form of a wider class of integrals called “elliptic.” Some properties and applications will be briefly discussed.

This is a Department of Mathematics Seminar and is a compilation of known material, and would be easily accessible to Upper Division Applied Mathematics students.