Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/ia/paper-3/9a/solution

In cylindrical coordinates, and . The chain rule gives and . Therefore
This is cylindrically radial divergence, valid for .
The bounded domain is outside the unit cylinder, below the inverse-square surface and above the lower plane:
The upper plane touches only the rim ; it is not an extra positive-area top face. Revolving the shaded meridional region below around the axis gives the three-dimensional domain.
Figure 1.
Meridional section of the annular volume between the unit cylinder, inverse-square surface and lower plane
.
With the Jacobian determinant of cylindrical coordinates,
Zero divergence gives , hence the most general solution on the positive radial interval is
Although this vector field is singular on the axis if , the entire closure of lies at , so it is smooth on a neighbourhood of and the divergence theorem applies.
Its volume integral of divergence is zero. Compute the outward surface integral directly. On the inner cylinder, , , and the flux is . On the curved roof , the outward vector surface element of a graph is
Therefore its flux is
The horizontal bottom has zero flux and the top rim has zero surface area. Summing gives
which verifies the divergence theorem with every boundary contribution accounted for.

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