Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/paper-2/16/b/solution

Put and . All vector fields and their spatial partial derivatives below are evaluated at . The product rule for a dot product gives
Because the vector field has no explicit time dependence, the multivariable chain rule gives , where the Jacobian matrix has entries . Consequently
The first term measures the change of the curl sampled as the point moves; the second measures the change in the velocity vector used in the dot product.
To give the result explicitly in , define the directional derivative operator . Since
the same expression is
For example ; the other two terms expand in the same way. Thus only the first and second spatial partial derivatives of , together with the velocity and acceleration of the parametric curve, occur.

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