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In calculus, the constant of integration, often denoted by (or ), is a constant term added to an antiderivative of a function () to indicate that the indefinite integral of () (i.e., the set of all antiderivatives of ()), on a connected domain, is only defined up to an additive constant.
The derivative of a constant term is 0, so when a term containing a constant term is differentiated, the constant term vanishes, regardless of its value. Therefore the antiderivative is only determined up to an unknown constant term, which is called "the constant of integration" and added in symbolic form (usually denoted as ).
Integration is the basic operation in integral calculus.While differentiation has straightforward rules by which the derivative of a complicated function can be found by differentiating its simpler component functions, integration does not, so tables of known integrals are often useful.
Integration, the process of computing an integral, is one of the two fundamental operations of calculus, [a] the other being differentiation. Integration was initially used to solve problems in mathematics and physics, such as finding the area under a curve, or determining displacement from velocity. Usage of integration expanded to a wide ...
In physics, the integration of acceleration yields velocity plus a constant. The constant is the initial velocity term that would be lost upon taking the derivative of velocity, because the derivative of a constant term is zero. This same pattern applies to further integrations and derivatives of motion (position, velocity, acceleration, and so ...
constant of integration The indefinite integral of a given function (i.e., the set of all antiderivatives of the function) on a connected domain is only defined up to an additive constant, the constant of integration. [15] [16] This constant expresses an ambiguity inherent
Many of the following antiderivatives have a term of the form ln |ax + b|. Because this is undefined when x = −b / a, the most general form of the antiderivative replaces the constant of integration with a locally constant function. [1] However, it is conventional to omit this from the notation.
A different technique, which goes back to Laplace (1812), [3] is the following. Let = =. Since the limits on s as y → ±∞ depend on the sign of x, it simplifies the calculation to use the fact that e −x 2 is an even function, and, therefore, the integral over all real numbers is just twice the integral from zero to infinity.