Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2014 / Paper 2 / 16 / b

The first field has vanishing curl and is the gradient of a monomial:For the second field, direct component differentiation givesIt is not identically zero. Thus ${\mathbf{F}}_1$ is conservative and ${\mathbf{F}}_2$ is not on ${\mathbb{R}}^3$. The conditional path-integral requests therefore apply to ${\mathbf{F}}_1$.

Parametrize the straight path by $\mathbf{r}(t)=(t,t,2t)$ for $0\le t\le 1$. The conservative field along it is $(6t^5,4t^5,t^5)$ and the tangent is $(1,1,2)$. ThusThe associated potential has ${\varphi }_1(B)-{\varphi }_1(A)=2$, in agreement with the fundamental theorem for line integrals.

For $\mathbf{r}(t)=(t,t,2t^3)$, the conservative field is $(6t^7,4t^7,t^5)$ and the tangent is $(1,1,6t^2)$. ThereforeThe two different paths give the same value because their line integrals depend only on the potential difference ${\varphi }_1(B)-{\varphi }_1(A)=2$. There is no scalar potential for ${\mathbf{F}}_2$ to which the conditional request could be applied.