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Notice The Similarity To What We Know From Section 12.4:: A X A 0 For Every Three-Dimensional (3-D)

This document discusses conservative vector fields and provides examples. A vector field is conservative if its curl is equal to zero. Example 2 shows that the vector field F(x, y, z) = xz i + xyz j - y^2 k is not conservative by calculating its curl and showing it is not equal to zero. Theorem 4 states that if a vector field is defined everywhere in a simply-connected domain, having curl equal to zero is both necessary and sufficient for the field to be conservative.

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32 views5 pages

Notice The Similarity To What We Know From Section 12.4:: A X A 0 For Every Three-Dimensional (3-D)

This document discusses conservative vector fields and provides examples. A vector field is conservative if its curl is equal to zero. Example 2 shows that the vector field F(x, y, z) = xz i + xyz j - y^2 k is not conservative by calculating its curl and showing it is not equal to zero. Theorem 4 states that if a vector field is defined everywhere in a simply-connected domain, having curl equal to zero is both necessary and sufficient for the field to be conservative.

Uploaded by

gthulasi787126
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GRADIENT VECTOR FIELDS

Notice the similarity to what we know

from Section 12.4:

a x a = 0 for every three-dimensional (3-D)


vector a.

CONSERVATIVE VECTOR FIELDS

A conservative vector field is one for which

F f
So, Theorem 3 can be rephrased as:
If F is conservative, then curl F = 0.
This gives us a way of verifying that
a vector field is not conservative.

CONSERVATIVE VECTOR FIELDS

Example 2

Show that the vector field

F(x, y, z) = xz i + xyz j y2 k
is not conservative.
In Example 1, we showed that:
curl F = y(2 + x) i + x j + yz k
This shows that curl F 0.

So, by Theorem 3, F is not conservative.

CONSERVATIVE VECTOR FIELDS

The converse of Theorem 3 is not true in

general.

The following theorem, though, says that


it is true if F is defined everywhere.
More generally, it is true if the domain is
simply-connectedthat is, has no hole.

CONSERVATIVE VECTOR FIELDS

Theorem 4 is the 3-D version of


Theorem 6 in Section 16.3

Its proof requires Stokes Theorem and


is sketched at the end of Section 16.8

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