Hint Page
Think about the following situation. You are on a raft floating along
a river. You drop a tennis ball to the left of the raft and another to
your right. If the tennis balls move at different speeds, then the
river has curl.
What can you say about the curl...
- if the right tennis ball moves faster than your raft and the
left ball moves slower?
- if the left ball moves faster?
- if both tennis balls stay together (even if they fall behind your raft).
Use these ideas to help you form your conjecture about what the curl measures.
Return to: Curl of Linear Flows
Frederick J. Wicklin <fjw@geom.umn.edu>
Last modified: Tue Apr 11 09:25:30 1995