Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2016 / Paper 1 / 13

Write $\mathbf{a}=(a_x,a_y,a_z)$. The cross product gives ${\mathbf{v}}_1=(a_{y}z-a_{z}y,a_{z}x-a_{x}z,a_{x}y-a_{y}x)$, whose three diagonal partial derivatives vanish. For the second vector field, direct differentiation gives ${\partial }_x(2xy)=2y$, ${\partial }_y(x^2+3y^2+z^2)=6y$, and ${\partial }_z(2yz)=2y$. Thus

Put $L=5\pi /2$. The curve tangent is ${\mathbf{r}}^{\prime }=(-b\sin \theta ,b\cos \theta ,c)$. For the first line integral, the scalar triple product identity gives $(\mathbf{a}\times \mathbf{r})\cdot {\mathbf{r}}^{\prime }=\mathbf{a}\cdot (\mathbf{r}\times {\mathbf{r}}^{\prime })$. Its cross product isThe needed definite integrals areand ${\int }_0^L(-\theta \sin \theta -\cos \theta )d\theta =[\theta \cos \theta -2\sin \theta {]}_0^L=-2$. HenceFor the second line integral, substitute the curve into ${\mathbf{v}}_2\cdot {\mathbf{r}}^{\prime }$. The cubic terms combine to $b^3\cos \theta$, leavingThe fundamental theorem of calculus therefore givesBoth calculations retain the full path from $\theta =0$ to $5\pi /2$, rather than inadvertently closing the helix after one turn.

Direct calculation of the curl givesSince $\mathbf{a}\ne 0$, the first vector field cannot be a gradient field: the curl of a gradient is zero. The second is a smooth polynomial field on all of the simply connected space ${\mathbb{R}}^3$, so its vanishing curl makes it a conservative vector field. A potential is also constructed explicitly in the next part. Thus ${\mathbf{v}}_2$ is a conservative vector field and ${\mathbf{v}}_1$ is not. A vanishing divergence alone, as for ${\mathbf{v}}_1$, is a different property and does not establish conservativity.

Integrating ${\varphi }_x=2xy$ gives $\varphi =x^{2}y+h(y,z)$. Matching ${\varphi }_y=x^2+3y^2+z^2$ then gives $h=y^3+y{z}^2+k(z)$. Finally ${\varphi }_z=2yz$ forces $k$ to be constant. A scalar potential isThe initial and final points of the helix are $(b,0,0)$ and $(0,b,cL)$, where $L=5\pi /2$. The fundamental theorem for line integrals givesagreeing with the directly evaluated $I_2$.