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In common speech, an infinitesimal object is an object that is smaller than any feasible measurement, but not zero in size—or, so small that it cannot be distinguished from zero by any available means. Hence, when used as an adjective in mathematics, infinitesimal means infinitely small, smaller than any standard real number. Infinitesimals ...
In 1655, John Wallis first used the notation for such a number in his De sectionibus conicis, [19] and exploited it in area calculations by dividing the region into infinitesimal strips of width on the order of . [20] But in Arithmetica infinitorum (1656), [21] he indicates infinite series, infinite products and infinite continued fractions by ...
Each real set, function, and relation has its natural hyperreal extension, satisfying the same first-order properties. The kinds of logical sentences that obey this restriction on quantification are referred to as statements in first-order logic. The transfer principle, however, does not mean that R and *R have identical behavior.
Two numeric forms x and y are forms of the same number (lie in the same equivalence class) if and only if both x ≤ y and y ≤ x. An ordering relationship must be antisymmetric, i.e., it must have the property that x = y (i. e., x ≤ y and y ≤ x are both true) only when x and y are the same object.
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On the other hand, / is a positive infinitesimal, since by the definition of least upper bound there must be an infinitesimal between / and , and if / < / then is not infinitesimal. But 1 / ( 4 n ) < c / 2 {\displaystyle 1/(4n)<c/2} , so c / 2 {\displaystyle c/2} is not infinitesimal, and this is a contradiction.
Related to this is the integral in which the infinitesimal increments are summed (e.g. to compute lengths, areas and volumes as sums of tiny pieces), for which Leibniz also supplied a closely related notation involving the same differentials, a notation whose efficiency proved decisive in the development of continental European mathematics.
The dependence of work on the path of the thermodynamic process is also unrelated to reversibility, since expansion work, which can be visualized on a pressure–volume diagram as the area beneath the equilibrium curve, is different for different reversible expansion processes (e.g. adiabatic, then isothermal; vs. isothermal, then adiabatic ...