Sentence examples for infinitesimal quantities from inspiring English sources

The paradoxical idea of infinitesimal quantities preoccupied ancient Greek mathematicians, especially Archimedes, who used the concept to calculate volumes of circles, cylinders, and spheres.

An investigation by Newsnight showed 10 of them putting patients' lives in danger by rejecting anti-malarial drugs for pills containing infinitesimal quantities of garlic and citronella oil.

The change could not help those who had lead in their bodies, but it sounded an alarm that even infinitesimal quantities of lead could be dangerous.

Madhava himself worked near the end of the 14th century, and verses attributed to him in the writings of his successors testify to his brilliant contributions on such topics as infinite series and the use of infinitesimal quantities.

Through ingenious transformations he handled problems involving more general algebraic curves, and he applied his analysis of infinitesimal quantities to a variety of other problems, including the calculation of centres of gravity and finding the lengths of curves.

The first employed infinitesimal quantities which, while not finite, are at the same time not exactly zero.

Indeed, the very idea of an infinitesimal quantity is paradoxical because the only number that is smaller than every positive number is 0 itself.

Because U is a state function, the infinitesimal quantity dU must be an exact differential, which means that its definite integral depends only on the initial and final states of the system.

Traditionally, an infinitesimal quantity is one which, while not necessarily coinciding with zero, is in some sense smaller than any finite quantity.

For example: (1) Robinson's (1974) non-standard analysis was based on infinitesimals, quantities smaller than any real number, as well as their reciprocals, the infinite numbers.

The infectious dose for salmonella is higher, but we're talking about infinitesimal, invisible quantities of bacteria.