He looked at her. For a long moment, the only curve between them was not a parabola or a helix, but something not yet parametrized. Something Pressley never wrote about.
“The (F) term couples (du) and (dv),” he said, understanding. “It means the coordinates aren’t orthogonal. Means you can’t separate things neatly.” elementary differential geometry andrew pressley pdf
Her desk, a war-zone of half-eaten ramen and scribbled notes, was her spaceship. The problem sets were her alien encounters. Tonight’s enemy: a space curve, (\gamma(t) = (t, t^2, \frac23t^3/2)). The prompt was innocent enough: Find the arc length from t=0 to t=2. He looked at her
“What’s the torsion of this story?” he asked, as the sun rose. “The (F) term couples (du) and (dv),” he
Leo’s tired eyes lit up. “You’re that Elara, aren’t you? The one who corrected the professor on the difference between geodesic curvature and normal curvature?”