Portal:Mathematics/Selected picture/7
Credit: Lucas V. Barbosa
A line integral is an integral where the function to be integrated, be it a scalar field as here or a vector field, is evaluated along a curve. The value of the line integral is the sum of values of the field at all points on the curve, weighted by some scalar function on the curve (commonly arc length or, for a vector field, the scalar product of the vector field with a differential vector in the curve). A detailed explanation of the animation is available. The key insight is that line integrals may be reduced to simpler definite integrals. (See also a similar animation illustrating a line integral of a vector field.) Many formulas in elementary physics (for example, W = F · s to find the work done by a constant force F in moving an object through a displacement s) have line integral versions that work for non-constant quantities (for example, W = ∫C F · ds to find the work done in moving an object along a curve C within a continuously varying gravitational or electric field F). A higher-dimensional analog of a line integral is a surface integral, where the (double) integral is taken over a two-dimensional surface instead of along a one-dimensional curve. Surface integrals can also be thought of as generalizations of multiple integrals. All of these can be seen as special cases of integrating a differential form, a viewpoint which allows multivariable calculus to be done independently of the choice of coordinate system. While the elementary notions upon which integration is based date back centuries before Newton and Leibniz independently invented calculus, line and surface integrals were formalized in the 18th and 19th centuries as the subject was placed on a rigorous mathematical foundation. The modern notion of differential forms, used extensively in differential geometry and quantum physics, was pioneered by Élie Cartan in the late 19th century.
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