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    Curvature: Practice Problems Assignment Problems

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    The document discusses curvature, which measures how fast a curve changes direction at a point. It provides the formal definition and two alternate formulas for calculating curvature. Examples are given to demonstrate applying the formulas to specific curves.

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    Curvature: Practice Problems Assignment Problems

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    The document discusses curvature, which measures how fast a curve changes direction at a point. It provides the formal definition and two alternate formulas for calculating curvature. Examples are given to demonstrate applying the formulas to specific curves.

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    Calculus III - Curvature

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    The document discusses curvature, which measures how fast a curve changes direction at a point. It provides the formal definition and two alternate formulas for calculating curvature. Examples are given to demonstrate applying the formulas to specific curves.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    52 views2 pages

    Curvature: Practice Problems Assignment Problems

    Uploaded by

    Anonymous uYg4Cv
    The document discusses curvature, which measures how fast a curve changes direction at a point. It provides the formal definition and two alternate formulas for calculating curvature. Examples are given to demonstrate applying the formulas to specific curves.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    You are on page 1of 2

    Calculus III - Curvature

    1 of 2

    http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcIII/Curvature.aspx

    Paul's Online Math Notes


    Calculus III (Notes) / 3-Dimensional Space / Curvature [Notes] [Practice Problems] [Assignment
    Problems]
    Calculus III - Notes
    Curvature
    In this section we want to briefly discuss the curvature of a smooth curve (recall that for a smooth curve
    we require
    is continuous and
    ). The curvature measures how fast a curve is changing
    direction at a given point.
    There are several formulas for determining the curvature for a curve. The formal definition of curvature
    is,

    where is the unit tangent and s is the arc length. Recall that we saw in a previous section how to
    reparameterize a curve to get it into terms of the arc length.
    In general the formal definition of the curvature is not easy to use so there are two alternate formulas that
    we can use. Here they are.

    These may not be particularly easy to deal with either, but at least we dont need to reparameterize the
    unit tangent.
    Example 1 Determine the curvature for

    Solution
    Back in the section when we introduced the tangent vector we computed the tangent and unit tangent
    vectors for this function. These were,

    The derivative of the unit tangent is,

    The magnitudes of the two vectors are,

    The curvature is then,

    30/08/2016 19:20

    Calculus III - Curvature

    2 of 2

    http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcIII/Curvature.aspx

    In this case the curvature is constant. This means that the curve is changing direction at the same rate
    at every point along it. Recalling that this curve is a helix this result makes sense.
    Example 2 Determine the curvature of
    .
    Solution
    In this case the second form of the curvature would probably be easiest. Here are the first couple of
    derivatives.

    Next, we need the cross product.

    The magnitudes are,

    The curvature at any value of t is then,

    There is a special case that we can look at here as well. Suppose that we have a curve given by
    and we want to find its curvature.
    As we saw when we first looked at vector functions we can write this as follows,

    If we then use the second formula for the curvature we will arrive at the following formula for the
    curvature.

    Calculus III (Notes) / 3-Dimensional Space / Curvature


    Problems]

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    30/08/2016 19:20

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