# Talk:Newton's notation

Jump to navigation Jump to search
WikiProject Physics (Rated Stub-class, Mid-importance)
This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.
Stub  This redirect does not require a rating on the project's quality scale.
Mid  This redirect has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Am I wrong or not -- I thought Newton only developed the overdot notation for the derivative? Dysprosia 08:16, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This page may not be authoritative.

Charles Matthews 08:19, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'm right! Yay :) (I'm not right often ;) I thought the guy that created the prime notation had a name starting with L - Lagrange, here's a ref [1], I'll change these accordingly Dysprosia 08:21, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I changed the interpretation from

${\displaystyle {\dot {x}}={\frac {dx}{dt}}=f'(t)}$
${\displaystyle {\ddot {x}}=f''(x)}$

to

${\displaystyle {\dot {x}}={\frac {dx}{dt}}=x'(t)}$
${\displaystyle {\ddot {x}}=x''(t)}$

Due to pages from the BBC and from the University of Texas at Austin

As written it was saying that the derivative of x with respect to t was somehow also the derivative of f with respect to t in one place and the derivative of f with respect to x in another place.

E David Moyer 15:10, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

## Use

Does anyone know if this notation is actually used today? I've asked several a few math professors and some didn't even know it existed, while the others said it was never used.

In physics, it's commonly used in basic mechanics problems where you know you'll only be dealing with first and second time derivatives (e.g., simple harmonic oscillator). Obviously ${\displaystyle {\dot {x}}}$ is much quicker to write than ${\displaystyle {\frac {dx}{dt}}}$ or even ${\displaystyle x^{\prime }(t)}$, but since it's of such limited usefulness it's usually seen as a special-case shorthand than an actual alternative notation system. — Laura Scudder 15:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

## Move

The new page is notation for differentiation - apologies for the incorrect link. Geometry guy 22:06, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

## Fluxion

Fluxion leads to a page unrelated to Newton's notation or the little dot on top. It leads to a type of particle. I will remove the incorrect link --DFRussia 09:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

## Delete?

Does this article need to exist anymore considering a section of the article on notation already contains everything here? IRWolfie- (talk)

Agreed... This article is too short and the content too trivial to deserve its own article. Besides, Newton's notation is mentioned in the article "Derivative" and the fluxions are mentioned briefly in the article "Newton's method"; so there is nothing original in this article. It would, however, be nice to have an article on fluxions -- assuming there is enough to discuss at a significant level. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brydustin (talkcontribs) 18:22, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

## Formal Reference for the Fluxion

There is a readily available classical work which gives details of the Newtonian fluxion notation:

Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematical Notations, Dover Publications, Inc. New York. ISBN 0-486-67766-4

I think that it's better to merge Newton's notation with Notation for differentiation and delete article of Newton's notation.

In particular, the discussion on the fluxions begin with article 567 (p.197 of the Second Volume).

Михал Орела 11:36, 11 September 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by MihalOrela (talkcontribs) --Михал Орела 11:42, 11 September 2012 (UTC)