Talk:Fractional calculus/alternative
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Back to: Mathematics | Next topic: Differintegrals
Fractional calculus is a part of mathematics dealing with generalisations of the derivative to derivatives of arbitrary order (not necessarily an integer). The name "fractional calculus" is somewhat of a misnomer since the generalisations are by no means restricted to fractions, but the label persists for historical reasons.
The fractional derivative of a function to order a is often defined implicitly by the Fourier transform. The fractional derivative in a point x is a local property only when a is an integer.
Applications of the fractional calculus includes partial differential equations, especially parabolic ones where it is sometimes useful to split a time-derivative into fractional time.
There are many well known fields of application where we can use the fractional calculus. Just a few of them are:
- Math-oriented
- Physics-oriented
- Electricity
- Mechanics
- Heat conduction
- Viscoelasticity
- Hydrogeology
- Nonlinear geophysics