The Violin and Integration

[dough_mouse]

Does anyone know why the shape of the holes in the violin are the same as the integrand symbol for calculus? Is it just coincidence or what? This has been bothering me for a while now and wikipedia and google have no answers!

[leucippus]

I'm pretty sure that it's just a coincidence.  In fact, they aren't exactly indentical (depending on what math font you use I guess)

The holes in a violin are referred to as "f-holes".  Supposedly representing the letter 'f' although, I don't think that was the original intent.  It was probably just a design that happened to look kind of like the letter 'f' and so luthiers began referring to them as 'f' holes (even though one of them is clearly reversed)

The integration symbol used in calculus that is popular today was actually introduced by Lebnitz and it's supposed to represent a 's' for summation.    It became a very tall elongated 's' because of how it was being used and eventually the limits of integration were included near the top and bottom of the symbol.

Newton didn't use this integration symbol.  I can't even remember what symbol he used but it never caught on.  The Lebnitz symbol was more sensuously appealing and became widely used.