Integrating gives . Matching then gives . Finally forces to be constant. A scalar potential is
The initial and final points of the helix are and , where . The fundamental theorem for line integrals gives
agreeing with the directly evaluated .
Direct calculation of the curl gives
Since , 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 , so its vanishing curl makes it a conservative vector field. A potential is also constructed explicitly in the next part. Thus is a conservative vector field and is not. A vanishing divergence alone, as for , is a different property and does not establish conservativity.
Put . The curve tangent is . For the first line integral, the scalar triple product identity gives . Its cross product is
The needed definite integrals are
and . Hence
For the second line integral, substitute the curve into . The cubic terms combine to , leaving
The fundamental theorem of calculus therefore gives
Both calculations retain the full path from to , rather than inadvertently closing the helix after one turn.
Write . The cross product gives , whose three diagonal partial derivatives vanish. For the second vector field, direct differentiation gives , , and . Thus
Write in the proposed local coordinates. The multivariable chain rule gives
Consequently
Away from the origin the Jacobian determinant is , so the inverse function theorem justifies these local coordinates. Therefore and the local general solution is
Substitution verifies the result: and , whose weighted sum vanishes.
There is a global qualification. The coordinate map is two-to-one, and a level set of has separate characteristic curve branches. A single profile on the entire plane does not follow without a branch-identification assumption. For example, take on the wedge , , and zero elsewhere. This is smooth, satisfies the equation, and has different values at and despite equal . The characteristic components of a hyperbolic first-order equation explain this obstruction. At the origin the coordinate map is singular and the original equation reads ; the boxed answer is the intended local form on a regular branch, or a global form under an additional identification of branches.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact