Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2019 / Paper 1 / 1 / e / Solution

The ellipse bounding the surface is $u=1$. With the upward normal, its positively oriented boundary is traversed by increasing $v$ from zero to $2\pi$:The given components are Cartesian components, so their ordinary dot product with this tangent isTherefore Stokes theorem givesA direct check uses $F_x=2y/a$ and $F_y=-2x/a$, hence $(\nabla \times \mathbf{F}{)}_z=-4/a$, and multiplies by the ellipse area $\pi a^2\sinh 1\cosh 1$. The third component cannot affect either calculation because the surface and its boundary lie at fixed $z$. Equivalently one may apply Stokes to the smooth planar field $(2y/a,-2x/a,0)$, avoiding any need to differentiate the elliptic-coordinate expression for the third component at its foci.