Functions of Several Variables
Variational problems that involve multiple integrals arise in numerous applications. For example, if φ(x,y) denotes the displacement of a membrane above the domain D in the x,y plane, then its potential energy is proportional to its surface area:
Plateau's problem consists of finding a function that minimizes the surface area while assuming prescribed values on the boundary of D; the solutions are called minimal surfaces. The Euler-Lagrange equation for this problem is nonlinear:
See Courant (1950) for details.
Read more about this topic: Calculus Of Variations
Famous quotes containing the words functions of, functions and/or variables:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“In today’s world parents find themselves at the mercy of a society which imposes pressures and priorities that allow neither time nor place for meaningful activities and relations between children and adults, which downgrade the role of parents and the functions of parenthood, and which prevent the parent from doing things he wants to do as a guide, friend, and companion to his children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“The variables of quantification, ‘something,’ ‘nothing,’ ‘everything,’ range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)