Can someone explain to me what a “derivative” means? How do you find the derivative of f(x)=x^3+1?

The derivative is the rate of change of a function, basically represents the slope at different points. To find the derivative of the given function you can use the power rule, which means, if n is a real number, d/dx(x^n)= nx^(n-1). This is a simplification of the chain rule based on the fact that d/dx(x)=1. Anyway, this means that d/dx(x^3 + 1)= 3x^2. Here n is 3 and so it is 3*x^(3-1)= 3x^2. The derivative of x^3+1 is 3x^2.

If you are wondering what happened to the 1, for any constant C, d/dx(C)=0.