Decompose by orthogonal projection onto the straight line spanned by and its orthogonal complement:
The first term is fixed by the rotation. If , the vectors and form an orthonormal basis of the perpendicular plane, oriented in the positive sense about . A planar rotation through therefore sends
Here . Adding the fixed parallel component proves the Rodrigues rotation formula in the required form:
When , both perpendicular terms vanish, so the same formula fixes as required. Positive angles use the right-hand convention about .
All forces on the first particle lie in the plane spanned by and : this holds for gravity, tension, and the normal reaction. Hence the azimuthal component of Newton's second law vanishes:
Using the product rule gives
Strictly, is the axial specific angular momentum; the actual axial angular momentum is , which is conserved as well.
Differentiate the stated total energy using the chain rule and then substitute the two Newton's second law equations:
The gravitational potential energy terms have canceled the power of gravity. Also is proportional to , whose dot product with is . Thus the stationary smooth mechanical constraint does no work. The remaining tension powers cancel by part (b), proving and conservation of total energy while the massless inextensible string remains taut and contact is maintained.
Write for the paper's . In a right-handed Cartesian coordinate system, the cross product is
It is perpendicular to both vectors, has norm , where is their angle, and has direction given by the right-hand rule when nonzero. Its norm is the area of the parallelogram spanned by the two vectors.
If , use that parallelogram as the base of the parallelepiped. Its perpendicular height is , where . Thus its volume is
If , both the volume and this scalar triple product vanish. If the cross product is nonzero, the scalar triple product vanishes exactly when lies in the plane spanned by . If it is zero, are linearly dependent, and adjoining still spans at most a plane. Consequently the three vectors are coplanar if and only if , including cases involving a zero vector.
The quadric surface is the unit sphere centered at the origin. Each section , for , is a circle of radius .
The quadric surface is a circular elliptic paraboloid, opening in the positive direction with vertex at the origin. Its horizontal sections are circles of radius , and its vertical sections through the axis are parabolas.
For , is unrestricted. If , both nonnegative terms must vanish, so the locus is the axis, a straight line. If , it is the plane , represented by the repeated factor . If , factorization gives
so the locus is two distinct planes, , meeting along the axis. These are degenerate quadrics, not ordinary curved cylinders.
Figure 1.
The sphere, elliptic paraboloid, and three degenerate quadric cases in Question 2(a)
. Details.
Write . Restriction to the plane gives
This is an equation of degree at most two in two Cartesian coordinates, the general algebraic form of a conic, with possible degenerate conics and an empty set of real points. No determinant hypothesis is needed for this substitution.
For an arbitrary plane, choose a point and an orthonormal basis of its direction linear subspace. Put and , where . With , the symmetric part of a matrix, the restricted equation is
This proves the plane-section result whenever “conic” allows the appropriate degeneracies. A rigid motion taking the chosen plane to gives the same argument.
The source's assumption does not guarantee a nondegenerate conic. Even with and , the section is a single point, and has no real points. With the nonsingular symmetric matrix giving , the section is the repeated straight line .
There is a further literal omission: the source does not assume is symmetric. For
one has but . Thus the section is the entire plane, rather than a conic. Only controls the quadratic form; invertibility of an arbitrary cannot remove this exception. If the intended hypothesis is that is symmetric and nonsingular, the quadratic restriction to a plane cannot vanish identically: otherwise , so would map a two-dimensional linear subspace injectively into its one-dimensional orthogonal complement, which is impossible. Degenerate and empty sections still remain possible.
A normal vector to the plane spanned by is their cross product:
Dividing by this Euclidean norm gives the two possible choices of unit normal,
Use the normal vector found from the edge vectors, rather than the normal vector to the origin-based linear span in part (b). The required plane satisfies . Since ,
After dividing by , its equation has a unit normal. Its perpendicular distance from the origin is thus .
On the circular cylinder, is constant, so the given line element reduces to . Unroll the circular cylinder with . The line element is then , so the usual Euclidean geometry formula measures arc length in the plane.
The endpoint has infinitely many lifts , with . For each lift, the straight line segment is shortest; its length is . Comparing the lifts gives the unrestricted shortest path on a circular cylinder:
If is a minimizing angular increment, a shortest geodesic is parametrized by , . This is a helix when both increments are nonzero, and a circular arc or vertical generator in the limiting cases. A nonminimal lift also gives a geodesic, but it is only shortest within its fixed winding class.
For , put . Then . At , both winding directions give distinct shortest paths of equal length.
The last two terms in the preceding result equal . Therefore
The left-hand side of the original partial differential equation is consequently , giving
In these variables it has the form of a heat equation, with logarithmic radial coordinate playing the evolution variable and angular coordinate playing the spatial variable. If is single-valued around the whole punctured plane, then as well; that periodicity is a global coordinate condition, not an extra local transformation term.
The mass density becomes . Integrate it over the sphere using the spherical polar coordinates and volume element above:
The angular integral is , since . Therefore
The term proportional to contributes zero by reflection across the equatorial plane. Thus the answer is also the volume times the average mass density . The undefined direction at the origin affects a single point and has no effect on this volume integral.
With normal vector , a plane through has equation . As , its plane equation is
The distance from a point to a plane is the absolute signed offset divided by the Euclidean norm of its normal vector. Hence the Euclidean distance from the origin is , since . The closest point is , whose Euclidean distance from the origin is and which satisfies the plane equation.
The displacement vectors are and . Their cross product is , with Euclidean norm three. Thus either sign of
is a unit normal vector to the second plane, whose equation is . A direction vector for the intersection is the cross product of the two normal vectors:
It is orthogonal to each normal vector. Since both planes contain , the whole intersection line is , .
The divergence is . With outward orientation, the divergence theorem converts the surface flux into a volume integral:
Directly, the three faces lying in coordinate planes contribute zero, and each opposite face contributes , confirming the sign and normalization.
Write , where . Because this hyperbolic function has strictly positive derivative , stationary points under an increasing outer function have the same positions and types for and . For ,
The first equation requires or . If , the second gives . If , it gives . These are all the nonzero stationary points. At the origin, , so its gradient is ; the origin is not stationary.
At the Hessian matrix of is , and at it is . At and its Hessian matrices are respectively and . Therefore
The extrema are local: is unbounded above and below on the full plane.
For the level curve geometry, a level is . In particular, the zero level curve is the union of the entire axis and the circle , crossing at the two saddle points. Inside the circle, above the axis and below it; outside, these signs reverse. Levels between and zero have closed loops around the upper minimum as well as unbounded lower-half-plane components. Reflection across the axis reverses the sign and gives the loops about the lower maximum. At the two extremal heights, the corresponding closed loop shrinks to its extremum. These features determine the sketch.
The shorter circular arc lies in the - plane and can be written , . The first field is , whose dot product with is one. Hence
The second field is radial while the circular tangent is perpendicular to the radius, so . Thus the first field gives different values, and , along the two paths, whereas the conservative second field gives the same endpoint difference.
As a check using Stokes theorem, the arc followed by the reversed segment encloses area in the plane. The constant curl has upward component two, giving circulation , exactly the difference above.
Figure 1.
Straight and circular paths with the same endpoints, enclosing the area responsible for their circulation difference
. Details.
At an intersection, the two position vectors agree, so . The scalar triple product with is therefore
since a determinant with repeated columns vanishes. Geometrically the displacement of the two anchor points must lie in the same plane as the two line directions.
This is a necessary condition. If are not parallel, it is also sufficient, because their span is exactly the plane perpendicular to . For parallel directions the triple product vanishes automatically, even for distinct lines, so the condition alone cannot guarantee intersection.
Choose the plane normal to be . Only the second field component contributes, and on it is . Thus the surface integral factors into two Gaussian integrals:
The original question does not specify an orientation; choosing instead gives .
The printed first component is undefined on the entire integration plane. Its removable continuous extension there is , since . The stated flux uses this natural extension; in fact the normal component alone is already well-defined and integrable on the plane, so the first component does not affect either oriented value.
A plane through the origin has equation for some nonzero normal . Dividing that normal by its Euclidean norm makes without changing the plane. Substitute the spherical coordinates from (a) and cancel the nonzero radius:
Its intersection with the sphere is the desired great circle; changing the sign of all three coefficients describes the same circle.
At the first endpoint, the Cartesian coordinates are , so its great circle must have . At the second endpoint, the plane condition gives . Since , an equivalent regular plane equation is
Where , divide by to obtain
The regular implicit equation includes the equatorial first endpoint; the tangent form is undefined there and must be read by a limit. The shorter connecting arc of this great circle is the shortest path. The endpoints are not antipodal, so this shorter arc is unique. For example, the central angle is , giving spherical distance .
Since , a level can occur only for . Taking its natural logarithm gives . Thus produces rectangular hyperbolas in the first and third quadrants, produces them in the second and fourth quadrants, and consists of both coordinate axes.
The gradient vanishes only at , where . The Hessian matrix there is , with negative determinant. Equivalently, while for nonzero small . Hence the only stationary point is a saddle point at on the graph; its location in the contour plane is the origin.
Figure 1.
Contours of the exponential of xy, showing the unique saddle at the origin
. Details.