Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2008 / Paper 2 / 18 / a / Solution

For a bounded region $V$ with piecewise smooth closed boundary $S$, outward unit normal vector $\mathbf{n}$ and continuously differentiable vector field $\mathbf{F}$, the divergence theorem states ${\int }_S\mathbf{F}\cdot \mathbf{n}dS={\int }_V\nabla \cdot \mathbf{F}dV$. Here $dS$ is scalar surface area, $dV$ is volume, and $d\mathbf{S}=\mathbf{n}dS$ is the oriented area element.

For $\mathbf{F}=\mathbf{r}$, its divergence is three. The ellipsoid has semiaxes $a,a,b$, so its volume is $4\pi a^{2}b/3$, obtained by scaling the unit ball. Consequently