Visual explanations of first order differential equations

Abstract

In order to adapt to students’ learning preferences and styles, efforts must be made to include relevance of the material to daily life experiences, preferably in easy-to-comprehend, visual, and intuitive ways. This is most relevant in math courses that are usually taught with little or no connection to other disciplines, and in particular engineering. This paper focuses on introducing first order differential equation and time constant of first order system using intuitive examples such as cell phone charging, cooling rates of hot coffee, diffusion, and time responses of different vehicles.