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line integrals

line integrals

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i encountered them (line integrals) last year in vector calculus, and this year i've got them in complex analysis. but does anyone actually know what they are? it's been bugging me for a while. like, how would you visualise one?

my lecturer informed me that they are "abstract tools used to assist with real integrals", or something along those lines, but that didn't help overly much. but it did a bit...

anyone got any better ways of explaining them?

please?

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you're probably getting confused with the 'line' part? but the thing is, it's a method of doing something, not some kind of a line that you could visualize.

if you drove a car over some mountains, I think you maybe could use a line integral to calculate the amount of fuel needed to drive along a specific route.

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Wikipedia (I know it is an over quoted and not always reliable source, but in this case seems reliable) does provide an animated gif which helps to visualise it. Here it is a particle travelling a trigonometric path through a field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_integral

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What's so hard to understand about them?

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Originally posted by XanthosNZ
What's so hard to understand about them?
Just help the guy out and stop being such a ck holster.

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Originally posted by Hand of Hecate
Just help the guy out and stop being such a ck holster.
Other than the picture on the wikipedia link I can't really help without knowing what exactly is hard to understand about them.

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Originally posted by XanthosNZ
What's so hard to understand about them?
Hello fellow student of life. I donut understand the rec system rollover. Can you please explain it with the wikipedia line intergals?

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Maybe this will help?

http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/336k/lectures/node15.html

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Originally posted by hopscotch
Hello fellow student of life. I donut understand the rec system rollover. Can you please explain it with the wikipedia line intergals?
Is there a time period that all recs are reset?

I don't even know how that is done.

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Originally posted by hopscotch
Hello fellow student of life. I donut understand the rec system rollover. Can you please explain it with the wikipedia line intergals?
You mention doughnuts, they are actually quite helpful in explaining the rec system, because they roll just like the 30 day period. Intergals have a period, too, but it's shorter than 30 days and it's not rolling, so it can't be used to explain the rec system.

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Originally posted by Nordlys
You mention doughnuts, they are actually quite helpful in explaining the rec system, because they roll just like the 30 day period. Intergals have a period, too, but it's shorter than 30 days and it's not rolling, so it can't be used to explain the rec system.
We could integrate from 1 to 30, but since there is only one dimension, that just wouldn't get us anywhere.

😕

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Originally posted by Nordlys
You mention doughnuts, they are actually quite helpful in explaining the rec system, because they roll just like the 30 day period. Intergals have a period, too, but it's shorter than 30 days and it's not rolling, so it can't be used to explain the rec system.
Let's bind a radioactive tracer to the recs, that way we can track their every movement using a geiger counter.

Who is up for this very important job?


🙂

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Originally posted by mlprior
Let's bind a radioactive tracer to the recs, that way we can track their every movement using a geiger counter.

Who is up for this very important job?


🙂
I don't think Health+Safety officers (mightly souls) will be agreeable to the unconfined use of radioisotopes..unless all the recs activities are limited within a restricted area 😕

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How many colours are needed to colour any map(1) on the surface of a torus such that no two adjacent regions are the same colour?

(1) A map being a set of regions covering the entire surface.

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Originally posted by XanthosNZ
How many colours are needed to colour any map(1) on the surface of a torus such that no two adjacent regions are the same colour?

(1) A map being a set of regions covering the entire surface.
7