Area of Part of A Circle
Area of Part of A Circle
Area of Part of A Circle
Given a circle of radius a, cut out a tab of height b. What is the area of this
tab? (See Figure 1.)
(0, b)
(a, 0)
One way to compute the area would be split the area into vertical strips and
integrate with respect to x:
�
Area = y dx.
This is awkward, because near the end the height√ of the region changes from a
constant y = b to the height of the circle y = a2 − x2 .
What if we integrate with respect to y? That seems to work better; � there is
a single simple expression for the length of each horizontal strip: x = a2 − y 2 .
� b
Area = x dy
0
� b �
= a2 − y 2 dy
0
We don’t yet have a rule for integrating functions of this form. Considering
that this integral arose from a question about a circle, it’s not surprising that
trigonometry will play a role in its solution.
When working with circles it often helps to use polar coordinates. In this
case, note that the upper right hand corner of the region has polar coordinates
(a cos θ0 , a sin θ0 ) where θ0 is the angle shown in Figure 2.
In general, x = a cos θ and y = a sin θ. If we substitute y = a sin θ into our
integrand we get:
�
x = a2 − y 2
1
(a cos θ0 , a sin θ0 )
θ0
�
= a2 − a2 sin2 θ
�
= a 1 − sin2 θ
√
= a cos2 θ
x = a cos θ
Changing to polar coordinates made our integrand look much nicer; we’ve gone
from an integrand with a square root and no trig functions to an integrand with
trig functions and no square root.
If we’re going to use the substitution y = a sin θ in our integral, we’ll also
need to replace dy by something in polar coordinates.
y = a sin θ
dy = a cos θ dθ
2
� � � �
2 θ sin(2θ)
a2 − y2 dy = a + +c
2 4
� �
2 θ sin θ cos θ
= a + +c
2 2
� 2 �
a θ a sin θa cos θ
= + + c.
2 2
3
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