Objectives
- Understand the geometric interpretation for the curl of a vector field.
- Examine examples of curl for various vector fields.
Section 8.2 The Curl of Vector Fields
The curl of a vector field is defined and motivated as a measurement of the amount of rotation in a vector field (at a particular point). Several vector fields are examined including a constant vector field, a purely rotational vector field, and a point source vector field. The curl of a vector field is shown as a vector field where the direction gives the axis of rotation and the length measures how strong the rotation is at the given point. The final example shows a more complex vector field where the user can view both the vector field and the curl field for each octant separately.
