26 · Fundamental Theorems in Three Dimensions
Chapter 26

Fundamental Theorems in Three Dimensions

26.1Stokes' Theorem

Figure 26.1 The same argument as the last chapter, one dimension up, and deliberately the same motion: every patch walked counterclockwise and held apart, then closed so that each interior pair annihilates, leaving the boundary and nothing else.
Figure 26.2 The curl is a vector, and a surface can only feel the part of it pointing along the surface's own normal. That is the whole reason Stokes' theorem dots one against the other.
Figure 26.3 Stokes' theorem needs a normal on the surface and a direction round the boundary, and it needs them married: choose the normal, and the right hand decides the other.
Figure 26.4

26.2The Divergence Theorem

Figure 26.5 Chapter 23 measured flux across a surface with a boundary — a net in a stream. Close the surface up and one word changes: outward. There is no longer a choice about which side counts as positive, because a closed surface has an inside.
Figure 26.6 The cancellation a third time, and for the last: cells shared an edge, patches shared an edge on a surface, boxes share a face. What leaves one box through a face enters its neighbour through the very same face, so the two readings are equal and opposite — one red, one blue — and they annihilate as the boxes close.
Figure 26.7