Arc Length
Main Concept
The arc length is defined as the length of a curve. It can be calculated by subdividing the curve into smaller pieces, each of which is approximated by a line segment that connects two points on the curve. Then the sum of the lengths of all of these line segments will approximate the length of the curve; the approximation will be more precise as the size of the line segments decreases. If the endpoints of these approximating line segments are , then their total length is given by:
.
If you then take the limit as the size of the line segments decreases to 0, the formula above becomes an integral. The form of the integral varies according to the type of curve:
over the interval :
parametric curve over the interval :
Example 1
Determine the arc length of between .
Solution
Recall the aforementioned formula:
The first step is to take the derivative of y with respect to x:
Then substitute the derivative into the first formula to get:
6.79.
Example 2
Adjust the slider to change the upper limit of . Then determine the length of the curve with ranging between and the upper limit that you chose.
Upper limit of :
To determine the arc length of the curve defined by these parametric equations, first take the derivative of x with respect to t:
Next, take the derivative of y with respect to t:
You can now substitute and into the first formula:
Using the trig identity: , you can simplify the above equation as:
After integrating, this becomes:
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