[Math] Time derivative of curl

calculusvector analysisvectors

I'm confused about the time derivative of the curl. If the following true? Where do I go wrong?

$$\frac { \partial } { \partial t} \ \vec{\nabla} \times \vec{v} = \frac{\partial \vec \nabla }{ \partial t} \times \vec v + \vec \nabla \times \frac { \partial \vec v }{\partial t} $$

The reason I'm confused is that the second term looks exactly like the first term, but the second term doesn't necessarily/immediately look like it vanishes.

If it does vanish, is it because $$ \frac {\partial \vec v}{\partial t} = \vec a = \vec \nabla \Phi $$ and since $\mathrm {curl(grad (\Phi))} = 0$, my thought that the first term is just like the LHS is true?

Something seems wrong here to me because it seems too strong a hypothesis to consider the time derivative of the vector field, $\vec v$ conservative.

Best Answer

It's best when you're working with not-true-vectors such as curl to calculate from first principles: $\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\vec{\nabla}\times\vec{v}$ has $i$th component $\epsilon_{ijk}\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\frac{\partial}{\partial x_j} v_k$, with implicit summation over repeated indices. Since the partial derivatives commute, this expression is $\epsilon_{ijk}\frac{\partial}{\partial x_j} \frac{\partial}{\partial t}v_k$, which is the $i$th component of $\vec{\nabla}\times\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\vec{v}$. In other words, one of the terms expected from a naïve Leibniz rule vanishes. Please don't interpret this as meaning $\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\vec{\nabla}=\vec{0}$, whatever that would mean.

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