009C Sample Final 1, Problem 9

A curve is given in polar coordinates by

$r=\theta$

$0\leq \theta \leq 2\pi$

Find the length of the curve.

Foundations:
The formula for the arc length $L$ of a polar curve $r=f(\theta )$ with $\alpha _{1}\leq \theta \leq \alpha _{2}$ is
$L=\int _{\alpha _{1}}^{\alpha _{2}}{\sqrt {r^{2}+{\bigg (}{\frac {dr}{d\theta }}{\bigg )}^{2}}}d\theta$.

Solution:

Step 1:
First, we need to calculate ${\frac {dr}{d\theta }}$. Since $r=\theta ,~{\frac {dr}{d\theta }}=1$.
Using the formula in Foundations, we have
$L=\int _{0}^{2\pi }{\sqrt {\theta ^{2}+1}}d\theta$.

Step 2:
Now, we proceed using trig substitution. Let $\theta =\tan x$. Then, $d\theta =\sec ^{2}xdx$.
So, the integral becomes
$L=\int _{\theta =0}^{\theta =2\pi }{\sqrt {\tan ^{2}x+1}}\sec ^{2}xdx=\int _{\theta =0}^{\theta =2\pi }\sec ^{3}xdx$.
We integrate to get $L={\frac {1}{2}}\sec x\tan x+{\frac {1}{2}}\ln |\sec x+\tan x|{\bigg |}_{\theta =0}^{\theta =2\pi }$.

Step 3:
Since $\theta =\tan x$, we have $x=\tan ^{-1}\theta$.
So, we have
$L={\frac {1}{2}}\sec(\tan ^{-1}(\theta ))\theta +{\frac {1}{2}}\ln |\sec(\tan ^{-1}(\theta ))+\theta |{\bigg |}_{0}^{2\pi }$.

Final Answer:

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