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In Cartesian coordinates, the divergence of a continuously differentiable vector field = + + is the scalar-valued function: = = (, , ) (, , ) = + +.. As the name implies, the divergence is a (local) measure of the degree to which vectors in the field diverge.
A normal vector of length one is called a unit normal vector. A curvature vector is a normal vector whose length is the curvature of the object. Multiplying a normal vector by −1 results in the opposite vector, which may be used for indicating sides (e.g., interior or exterior).
For any smooth function f on a Riemannian manifold (M, g), the gradient of f is the vector field ∇f such that for any vector field X, (,) =, that is, ((),) = (), where g x ( , ) denotes the inner product of tangent vectors at x defined by the metric g and ∂ X f is the function that takes any point x ∈ M to the directional derivative of f ...
Illustration of tangential and normal components of a vector to a surface. In mathematics, given a vector at a point on a curve, that vector can be decomposed uniquely as a sum of two vectors, one tangent to the curve, called the tangential component of the vector, and another one perpendicular to the curve, called the normal component of the vector.
A vector field V defined on an open set S is called a gradient field or a conservative field if there exists a real-valued function (a scalar field) f on S such that = = (,,, …,). The associated flow is called the gradient flow , and is used in the method of gradient descent .
The gradient of a function is obtained by raising the index of the differential , whose components are given by: =; =; =, = = The divergence of a vector field with components is
This free software had an earlier incarnation, Macsyma. Developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s, it was maintained by William Schelter from 1982 to 2001. In 1998, Schelter obtained permission to release Maxima as open-source software under the GNU General Public license and the source code was released later that year ...
In other words, the surface gradient is the orthographic projection of the gradient onto the surface. The surface gradient arises whenever the gradient of a quantity over a surface is important. In the study of capillary surfaces for example, the gradient of spatially varying surface tension doesn't make much sense, however the surface gradient ...