Let be an open, two-sided surface bounded by a closed non-intersecting curve (simple closed curve). Consider a directed line normal to as positive if it is on one side of , and negative if it is on the other side of . The choice of which side is positive is arbitrary but should be decided upon in advance. Call the direction or sense of positive if an observer, walking on the boundary of with his head pointing in the direction of the positive normal, has the surface on his left. Then if are single-valued, continuous, and have continuous first partial derivatives in a region of space including , we have
In vector form with and , this is simply expressed as
In words this theorem, called Stoke’s theorem, states that the line integral of the tangential component of a vector taken around a simple closed curve is equal to the surface integral of the normal component of the curl of taken over any surface having as a boundary. Note that if, as a special case in (39), we obtain the result (28).
タグ: positive
SIMPLE CLOSED CURVES. SIMPLY AND MULTIPLY-CONNECTED REGIONS
A simple closed curve is a curve which does not intersect itself anywhere. Mathematically, a curve in the plane is defined by the parametric equations where and are single-valued and continuous in an interval . If and , the curve is said to be closed. If and only when (except in the special case where and ), the curve is closed and does not intersect itself and so is a simple closed curve. We shall also assume, unless otherwise stated, that and are piecewise differentiable in .
If a plane region has the property that any closed curve in it can be continuously shrunk to a point without leaving the region, then the region is called simply-connected, otherwise it is called multiply-connected.
As the parameter varies from to , the plane curve is described in a certain sense or direction. For curves in the plane, we arbitrarily describe this direction as positive or negative according as a person traversing the curve in this direction with his head pointing in the positive direction has the region enclosed by the curve always toward his left or right respectively. If we look down upon a simple closed curve in the plane, this amounts to saying that traversal of the curve in the counterclockwise direction is taken as positive while traversal in the clockwise direction is taken as negative.