Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2004 Paper 2 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Let be the interior of the tetrahedron, and take any constant vector field . Its divergence is zero, so the divergence theorem givesChoosing to be each Cartesian basis vector proves . This is the general fact that vector areas of a closed polyhedron sum to zero, specialized to four faces. The outward orientations are essential: the scalar face areas are all positive and do not sum to zero.
For the triangular face, take the cross product of two edges and divide by two:The origin lies on the opposite side from this normal, since . Thus this is already the outward vector area, withThe vector areas of a closed polyhedron sum to zero, so the sum for the remaining three faces isFigure 1.
Tetrahedron with its highlighted face PQR and outward unit normal
. Details. 