With the final one we gave both the vector form of the equation as well as the parametric form and if we need the two-dimensional version then we just drop the z components. In fact, we will be using the two-dimensional version of this in this section.
For the ellipse and the circle we’ve given two parameterizations, one tracing out the curve clockwise and the other counter-clockwise. As we’ll eventually see the direction that the curve is traced out can, on occasion, change the answer. Also, both of these “start” on the positive x-axis at .
Now let’s move on to line integrals. In Calculus I we integrated , a function of a single variable, over an interval . In this case we were thinking of x as taking all the values in this interval starting at a and ending at b. With line integrals we will start with integrating the function , a function of two variables, and the values of x and y that we’re going to use will be the points, , that lie on a curve C. Note that this is different from the double integrals that we were working with in the previous chapter where the points came out of some two-dimensional region.
Let’s start with the curve C that the points come from. We will assume that the curve is smooth (defined shortly) and is given by the parametric equations,
We will often want to write the parameterization of the curve as a vector function. In this case the curve is given by,