surface area of revolution

**slevvio** · April 30th 2008, 10:51 AM

Find the surface area of revolution generated by the following curve (given in parametric form):

$x = cos\theta(1+cos\theta), y=sin\theta(1+cos\theta), \left(0\le\theta\le\pi\right)$ .

I managed to get the following:

Surface Area = $2\pi\int_0^{\pi} 2sin\theta cos\frac{\theta}{2}(1+cos\theta)d\theta$

How on Earth do I integrate this? Thanks for any help

**Chris L T521** · May 6th 2008, 10:31 PM

Originally Posted by slevvio

Find the surface area of revolution generated by the following curve (given in parametric form):

$x = cos\theta(1+cos\theta), y=sin\theta(1+cos\theta), \left(0\le\theta\le\pi\right)$ .

I managed to get the following:

Surface Area = $2\pi\int_0^{\pi} 2sin\theta cos\frac{\theta}{2}(1+cos\theta)d\theta$

How on Earth do I integrate this? Thanks for any help

I would first start of by rewriting the integrand. Recall that

$cos{\frac{\theta}{2}}=+-\sqrt{\frac{1+cos{\theta}}{2}}$ .

I will take the positive square root since surface area must be positive. Therefore, the integrand can be simplified to:

$2sin{\theta}\sqrt{\frac{1+cos{\theta}}{2}}(1+cos{\ theta})=\sqrt{2}sin{\theta}(1+cos{\theta})^{3/2}$

Thus the integral becomes:

$2\pi\int_{0}^{\pi}\sqrt{2}sin{\theta}(1+cos{\theta })^{3/2}\,d\theta$

Apply a substitution...primarily $u=1+cos\theta$ . Thus $du=-sin\theta d\theta$ . Solving for $d\theta$ , we get $d\theta=-\frac{du}{sin\theta}$ .

Before we substitute, we can change the limits of integration as well. The upper limit will become $u_2=1+cos\pi=0$ and the lower limit will become $u_1=1+cos(0)=2$ .

Now, the integral can be rewritten as:

$-2\pi\int_{2}^{0}\sqrt{2}u^{3/2}\,du=2\pi\int_{0}^{2}\sqrt{2}u^{3/2}\,du$

evaluating the integral we get:

$\frac{4\pi}{5}\sqrt{2}(2^{5/2}-0^{3/2})=\frac{4\pi}{5}(2^3)=\frac{32\pi}{5}$ .

Hope that helped you out!

Thread: surface area of revolution

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Display

surface area of revolution

Similar Math Help Forum Discussions

Surface Area of a Revolution

Surface area of a revolution

area of a surface of revolution

Surface Area of a Revolution

area of surface of revolution

Search Tags