SUNY Geneseo Department of Mathematics

Circulation Line Integrals

Wednesday, November 28

Math 223 01
Fall 2018
Prof. Doug Baldwin

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Misc

Problem Set Grading

Did you think the outcomes-and-checkmarks grading system worked or didn’t for problem set 11?

SOFIs

aka Student Opinion of Faculty Instruction survey.

You should have gotten an email about filling them out through Knightweb.

Please do — your feedback can make a difference in how I teach this or other courses in the future.

Review Session

Do you want one for around an hour on study day?

The only rule would be that you come with questions or things you want to review, I won’t decide for you.

Questions?

Bounds?

What are the bounds of integration for problem set 12, question 1?

Start by parameterizing the path. Curves defined via an explicit equation with a single independent variable can be parameterized by making the independent variable be the parameter and the dependent variable the appropriate function of that parameter.

r(t) can be the vector with x = t, y = 3t

Once you have a parameterization, you can solve for the t values that make it equal to the starting and ending points:

r(t) is (0,0) when t = 0, and (1,3) when t = 1

Differentials?

Now how do you use those bounds in the integral in question 1? Is it really 2 integrals, since there’s a “dx” part and a “dy” part?

You could separate it into 2, but realize that “dx” and “dy” can both be related back to t, thanks to the parametric form of the path.

Integral of P dx + Q dy is really an integral wrt t since x and y depend on t

Circulation

Last class we looked at flux as a way of finding the flow of water through a bag of grains in brewing.

Water circulating around a pot and through a bag at various places

Circulation is less relevant to brewing, but what is the circulation around the bag at position 1?

Plug the curve for the bag and field for water flow into the standard form of a circulation integral and solve...

Integrate (y,-x) dot (-sin t, cos t) to get -2 pi

How is this integral different from the one for flux? The r′(t) vs n(t) difference is a big one, because it means flux integrals (with n) look at the component of a field perpendicular to the path, while circulation integrals (with r′) look a the component parallel to the path.

Circle with vector parallel and perpendicular to sides

What if the bag is a slightly different shape?

Water circulating around a pot with an elliptical bag at center

Not really different from before, just a different equation for the bag:

Integrate (y,-x) dot (-2 sin t, cos t) to get -4 pi

Key Points

Circulation formulas

Next

What if the flow of water changes in the above circulation examples?

Water flowing diagonally through circular bag at center of pot

Visually, based on idea of circulation as field parallel to path or tendency of field to make the region inside the path rotate, it seems it should be 0.

Can you find a position or shape for the grains that gives a non-zero circulation? Think about this quantitatively, i.e., via circulation integrals.

Then read about conservative vector fields, specifically...

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