I will go against the advice that you were offered. Especially early on I think trying to understand applications can be a bit of a trap. Either the application is so simple it can be explained without the math[e.g. twisting a factory band into a Mobius strip to make the band wear on both sides, square-cube law, logistic curves in epidemics] or the details are actually quite complicated, which may obscure one’s understanding of what is the actual generalizable math concept and what is specific to this problem.
The prototypical application of calculus is Newton’s work on astronomy & mechanics. This is a typical case of the latter.
I will go against the advice that you were offered. Especially early on I think trying to understand applications can be a bit of a trap. Either the application is so simple it can be explained without the math[e.g. twisting a factory band into a Mobius strip to make the band wear on both sides, square-cube law, logistic curves in epidemics] or the details are actually quite complicated, which may obscure one’s understanding of what is the actual generalizable math concept and what is specific to this problem.
The prototypical application of calculus is Newton’s work on astronomy & mechanics. This is a typical case of the latter.
That said, I suppose you’ve heard of
[1] 3Blue1Brown https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw