Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2011 / Paper 2 / 12 / b / Solution

Hold $r$ fixed and differentiate the position vector $\mathbf{X}(\theta ,\varphi )$. Its coordinate tangent vectors areTheir dot product is zero, and their squared Euclidean norms are $r^2$ and $r^2{\sin }^2\theta$. To first order, the displacement is $\delta \mathbf{X}={\mathbf{X}}_{\theta }\delta \theta +{\mathbf{X}}_{\varphi }\delta \varphi +O((|\delta \theta |+|\delta \varphi |{)}^2)$. Squaring givesThis is the line element on a sphere. The chord distance and the short surface arc length agree to the order retained here.