AREA IN POLAR COORDINATES

Some problems in finding plane areas are easier to solve if the integrals that represent those
areas are expressed in polar coordinates.

Suppose we have a curve, "

", and two rays centered at the origin and differing

infinitesimally in the angles that they make with the positive x-axis. Let "
difference in these rays and let "
positive x-axis. Let

" be the angular

" be the angle that they both nominally make with the

"dA" be the area bounded by those rays and

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The total area contained in the region enclosed by "

is this definite integral.

" and the angles: "

Example # 1: Find the area of one leaf of the four-leaf clovers of "

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".

"

Anyone of the 4 leafs will do. We choose the one in the first quadrant. The radius vanishes at

. So those are the respective limits of integration.

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Example # 2: Find the area of the region enclosed by the inner loop of the
limacon:"

".

This problem is somewhat confusing because we allowed " r " to be negative.

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