Lecture 1

N. Homchaudhuri July,29,2013
Abstract This lecture introduces the line integral and shows how to calculate the mass or charge of a curve in space.

The fundamental theorem of integral calculus says if a f (x) dx = F (b) F (a),then F (x) = f (x). This means dF (x) = f (x)dx,so that this theorem can be restated as b dF (x) = F (b) F (x). This allows us to calculate,for example, the mass of a wire a x (Figure 1) lying along the x axis. It is given by m(l) m(0) = 0 dm(x) dx,where mass density:(x) x=0 x

x=l

Figure 1: A wire along the x-axis m(0) is the mass upto x = 0 and m(l) is the mass upto x = l.But the wire begins at l x = 0 and so m(0) = 0.So the mass of the wire is given by m(l) = 0 dm(x) dx.The integrand dm(x) is called the differential of the mass and is equal to (x)dx,wheredx is a differential length along the wire. Let us now consider a wire situated in space(Figure s=l

(x,y ,z )

s = 0 curve: x = x(t),y = y (t),z = z (t) Figure 2: A wire in space 1

2).Let the arc-length s be used to locate any point on the wire.By the analysis carried out for a wire lying along the x axis we can say that the mass of the wire in space l is m(l) = 0 dm(s) ds,where dm(s) = (x, y, z )ds,ds being the differential of arclength and the point (x, y, z ) corresponds to an arc-length s.This integral is an example of a LINE INTEGRAL.In the case of the wire lying along the x axis,the differential length is dx which is the distance between x and x + dx.So,the differential of arc-length ds is equal to the distance between the points (x, y, z ) and (x + dx, y + dy, z + dz ).So l ds = (dx)2 + (dy )2 + (dz )2 and m(l) = 0 (x, y, z ) (dx)2 + (dy )2 + (dz )2 ,where the point (x, y, z ) corresponds to an arc-length s.Let the parametric equations of the wire be x = x(t),y = y (t),z = z (t),where t is the parameter.(Look at how a circle dy dz is represented parametrically in Figure 3). Then dx = dx dt dt,dy = dt dt,dz = dt dt.The y

a t

s=at x

The parametric equations are x = a cos(t),y = a sin(t),where the parameter t is the angle. The parametric equations could also be x = a cos(s/a),y = a sin(s/a),where s = at. Figure 3: A circle with equation x2 + y 2 = a2 .
dy 2 dz 2 2 mass of the wire then becomes m(l) = a (x(t), y (t), z (t)) ( dx dt ) + ( dt ) + ( dt ) dt,where t = a correspond to the end of the wire s = 0 and t = b correspond to the other end s = l.Similarly,we could calculate the charge on a wire in space if the charge density for the wire is known. b