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When rectified, the curve gives a straight line segment with the same length as the curve's arc length.

Arc length s of a logarithmic spiral as a function of its parameter θ.

Arc length is the distance between two points along a section of a curve.

Determining the length of an irregular arc segment is also called rectification of a curve. The advent of
infinitesimal calculus led to a general formula that provides closed-form solutions in some cases.

Contents

● 1
● General approach
●
● 2
● Formula for a smooth curve
●
● 3
● Finding arc lengths by integrating
○ 3.1
○ Numerical integration
○
○ 3.2
○ Curve on a surface
○
○ 3.3
 ○ Other coordinate systems
○
● 4
● Simple cases
○ 4.1
○ Arcs of circles
■ 4.1.1
■ Great circles on Earth
■
○ 4.2
○ Other simple cases
○
● 5
● Historical methods
○ 5.1
○ Antiquity
○
○ 5.2
○ 17th century
○
○ 5.3
○ Integral form
○
● 6
● Curves with infinite length
●
● 7
● Generalization to (pseudo-)Riemannian manifolds
●
● 8
● See also
●
● 9
● References
●
● 10
● Sources
●
● 11
● External links
●

General approach[edit]
 Approximation by multiple linear segments

A curve in the plane can be approximated by connecting a finite number of points on the curve using line
segments to create a polygonal path. Since it is straightforward to calculate the length of each linear segment
(using the Pythagorean theorem in Euclidean space, for example), the total length of the approximation can be
found by summation of the lengths of each linear segment; that approximation is known as the (cumulative)
[1]
chordal distance.

If the curve is not already a polygonal path, using a progressively larger number of segments of smaller lengths
will result in better approximations. The lengths of the successive approximations will not decrease and may
keep increasing indefinitely, but for smooth curves they will tend to a finite limit as the lengths of the segments
get arbitrarily small.

For some curves there is a smallest number

{\displaystyle L}

that is an upper bound on the length of all polygonal approximations. These curves are called rectifiable and
the arc length is defined as the number

{\displaystyle L}

Formula for a smooth curve[edit]

See also: Length of a curve

Let

{\displaystyle f\colon [a,b]\to \mathbb {R} ^{n}}

be an injective and continuously differentiable function. The length of the curve defined by

{\displaystyle f}

can be defined as the limit of the sum of line segment lengths for a regular partition of

{\displaystyle [a,b]}

as the number of segments approaches infinity. This means

{\displaystyle L(f)=\lim _{N\to \infty }\sum _{i=1}^{N}{\bigg |}f(t_{i})-f(t_{i-1}){\bigg |}}

where

{\displaystyle t_{i}=a+i(b-a)/N=a+i\Delta t}

for

{\displaystyle i=0,1,\dotsc ,N.}

This definition is equivalent to the standard definition of arc length as an integral:

{\displaystyle \lim _{N\to \infty }\sum _{i=1}^{N}{\bigg |}f(t_{i})-f(t_{i-1}){\bigg |}=\lim _{N\to

\infty }\sum _{i=1}^{N}\left|{\frac {f(t_{i})-f(t_{i-1})}{\Delta t}}\right|\Delta t=\int _{a}^{b}{\Big
|}f'(t){\Big |}\ dt.}

The last equality above is true because of the following: (i) by the fundamental theorem of calculus,

{\displaystyle f(t_{i})-f(t_{i-1})=\Delta t\int _{0}^{1}f^{\prime }(\theta t_{i}+(1-\theta )t_{i-1})\

d\theta }

; (ii) the function

{\displaystyle \left|f'\right|}

is continuous, thus it is uniformly continuous, so there is a positive real function

{\displaystyle \delta (\epsilon )}

of positive real

{\displaystyle \epsilon }
such that

{\displaystyle \Delta t<\delta (\epsilon )}

implies

{\displaystyle \left|{\Big |}f'(t_{i-1}+\theta _{i}(t_{i}-t_{i-1})){\Big |}-{\Big |}f'(t_{i}){\Big

|}\right|<\epsilon .}

This means
 {\displaystyle \sum _{i=1}^{N}\left|{\frac {f(t_{i})-f(t_{i-1})}{\Delta t}}\right|\Delta t-\sum
_{i=1}^{N}{\Big |}f'(t_{i}){\Big |}\Delta t}

has absolute value less than

{\displaystyle \epsilon (b-a)}

for

{\displaystyle N>(b-a)/\delta (\epsilon ).}

This means that in the limit

{\displaystyle N\rightarrow \infty ,}

the left term above equals the right term, which is just the Riemann integral of

{\displaystyle \left|f'(t)\right|}

on

{\displaystyle [a,b].}

This definition of arc length shows that the length of a curve

{\displaystyle f:[a,b]\rightarrow \mathbb {R} ^{n}}

continuously differentiable on

{\displaystyle [a,b]}

is always finite. In other words, the curve is always rectifiable.

The definition of arc length of a smooth curve as the integral of the norm of the derivative is equivalent to the
definition

{\displaystyle L(f)=\sup \sum _{i=1}^{N}{\bigg |}f(t_{i})-f(t_{i-1}){\bigg |}}

where the supremum is taken over all possible partitions

{\displaystyle a=t_{0}<t_{1}<\dots <t_{N-1}<t_{N}=b}

of

{\displaystyle [a,b].}
 [2]
This definition is also valid if

{\displaystyle f}

is merely continuous, not differentiable.

A curve can be parameterized in infinitely many ways. Let

{\displaystyle \varphi :[a,b]\to [c,d]}

be any continuously differentiable bijection. Then

{\displaystyle g=f\circ \varphi ^{-1}:[c,d]\to \mathbb {R} ^{n}}

is another continuously differentiable parameterization of the curve originally

defined by

{\displaystyle f.}

The arc length of the curve is the same regardless of the parameterization used to define the curve:

{\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}L(f)&=\int _{a}^{b}{\Big |}f'(t){\Big |}\ dt=\int _{a}^{b}{\Big

|}g'(\varphi (t))\varphi '(t){\Big |}\ dt\\&=\int _{a}^{b}{\Big |}g'(\varphi (t)){\Big |}\varphi '(t)\
dt\quad {\text{in the case of }}\varphi {\text{ being non-decreasing}}\\&=\int _{c}^{d}{\Big
|}g'(u){\Big |}\ du\quad {\text{using integration by substitution}}\\&=L(g).\end{aligned}}}

Finding arc lengths by integrating[edit]

See also: Differential geometry of curves
 Quarter circle

If a planar curve in

{\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{2}}

is defined by the equation

{\displaystyle y=f(x),}

where

{\displaystyle f}

is continuously differentiable, then it is simply a special case of a parametric equation where

{\displaystyle x=t}

and

{\displaystyle y=f(t).}

The Euclidean distance of each infinitesimal segment of the arc can be given by:

{\displaystyle {\sqrt {dx^{2}+dy^{2}}}={\sqrt {1+\left({\frac {dy}{dx}}\right)^{2}\,}}dx.}

The arc length is then given by:

{\displaystyle s=\int _{a}^{b}{\sqrt {1+\left({\frac {dy}{dx}}\right)^{2}\,}}dx.}

Curves with closed-form solutions for arc length include the catenary, circle, cycloid, logarithmic spiral, parabola,
semicubical parabola and straight line. The lack of a closed form solution for the arc length of an elliptic and
hyperbolic arc led to the development of the elliptic integrals.

Numerical integration[edit]
In most cases, including even simple curves, there are no closed-form solutions for arc length and numerical
integration is necessary. Numerical integration of the arc length integral is usually very efficient. For example,
consider the problem of finding the length of a quarter of the unit circle by numerically integrating the arc length
integral. The upper half of the unit circle can be parameterized as

{\displaystyle y={\sqrt {1-x^{2}}}.}

The interval

{\displaystyle x\in \left[-{\sqrt {2}}/2,{\sqrt {2}}/2\right]}

corresponds to a quarter of the circle. Since

{\displaystyle dy/dx=-x/{\sqrt {1-x^{2}}}}

and

{\displaystyle 1+(dy/dx)^{2}=1/\left(1-x^{2}\right),}

the length of a quarter of the unit circle is

{\displaystyle \int _{-{\sqrt {2}}/2}^{{\sqrt {2}}/2}{\frac {1}{\sqrt {1-x^{2}}}}\,dx.}

The 15-point Gauss–Kronrod rule estimate for this integral of 1.570796326808177 differs from the true length of

{\displaystyle {\Big [}\arcsin x{\Big ]}_{-{\sqrt {2}}/2}^{{\sqrt {2}}/2}={\frac {\pi }{2}}}

−11
by 1.3×10 and the 16-point Gaussian quadrature rule estimate of 1.570796326794727 differs from the true
−13
length by only 1.7×10 . This means it is possible to evaluate this integral to almost machine precision with only
16 integrand evaluations.

Curve on a surface[edit]
Let

{\displaystyle \mathbf {x} (u,v)}

be a surface mapping and let

{\displaystyle \mathbf {C} (t)=(u(t),v(t))}

be a curve on this surface. The integrand of the arc length integral is

{\displaystyle \left|\left(\mathbf {x} \circ \mathbf {C} \right)'(t)\right|.}

Evaluating the derivative requires the chain rule for vector fields:

{\displaystyle D(\mathbf {x} \circ \mathbf {C} )=(\mathbf {x} _{u}\ \mathbf {x} _{v}){\binom
{u'}{v'}}=\mathbf {x} _{u}u'+\mathbf {x} _{v}v'.}

The squared norm of this vector is

{\displaystyle \left(\mathbf {x} _{u}u'+\mathbf {x} _{v}v'\right)\cdot (\mathbf {x} _{u}u'+\mathbf {x}
_{v}v')=g_{11}\left(u'\right)^{2}+2g_{12}u'v'+g_{22}\left(v'\right)^{2}}

(where

{\displaystyle g_{ij}}

is the first fundamental form coefficient), so the integrand of the arc length integral can be written as

{\displaystyle {\sqrt {g_{ab}\left(u^{a}\right)'\left(u^{b}\right)'\,}}}

(where

{\displaystyle u^{1}=u}

and

{\displaystyle u^{2}=v}

).

Other coordinate systems[edit]

Let

{\displaystyle \mathbf {C} (t)=(r(t),\theta (t))}

be a curve expressed in polar coordinates. The mapping that transforms from polar
coordinates to rectangular coordinates is

{\displaystyle \mathbf {x} (r,\theta )=(r\cos \theta ,r\sin \theta ).}

The integrand of the arc length integral is

{\displaystyle \left|\left(\mathbf {x} \circ \mathbf {C} \right)'(t)\right|.}

The chain rule for vector fields shows that

{\displaystyle D(\mathbf {x} \circ \mathbf {C} )=\mathbf {x} _{r}r'+\mathbf {x} _{\theta }\theta '.}

So the squared integrand of the arc length integral is

{\displaystyle \left(\mathbf {x_{r}} \cdot \mathbf {x_{r}} \right)\left(r'\right)^{2}+2\left(\mathbf

{x} _{r}\cdot \mathbf {x} _{\theta }\right)r'\theta '+\left(\mathbf {x} _{\theta }\cdot \mathbf {x}
_{\theta }\right)\left(\theta '\right)^{2}=\left(r'\right)^{2}+r^{2}\left(\theta '\right)^{2}.}

So for a curve expressed in polar coordinates, the arc length is

{\displaystyle \int _{t_{1}}^{t_{2}}{\sqrt {\left({\frac {dr}{dt}}\right)^{2}+r^{2}\left({\frac {d\theta

}{dt}}\right)^{2}\,}}dt=\int _{\theta (t_{1})}^{\theta (t_{2})}{\sqrt {\left({\frac {dr}{d\theta
}}\right)^{2}+r^{2}\,}}d\theta .}

Now let

{\displaystyle \mathbf {C} (t)=(r(t),\theta (t),\phi (t))}

be a curve expressed in spherical coordinates where

{\displaystyle \theta }

is the polar angle measured from the positive

{\displaystyle z}
-axis and

{\displaystyle \phi }

is the azimuthal angle. The mapping that transforms from spherical coordinates to rectangular coordinates is

{\displaystyle \mathbf {x} (r,\theta ,\phi )=(r\sin \theta \cos \phi ,r\sin \theta \sin \phi ,r\cos
\theta ).}

Using the chain rule again shows that

{\displaystyle D(\mathbf {x} \circ \mathbf {C} )=\mathbf {x} _{r}r'+\mathbf {x} _{\theta }\theta
'+\mathbf {x} _{\phi }\phi '.}

All dot products

{\displaystyle \mathbf {x} _{i}\cdot \mathbf {x} _{j}}

where

{\displaystyle i}

and

{\displaystyle j}

differ are zero, so the squared norm of this vector is

{\displaystyle \left(\mathbf {x} _{r}\cdot \mathbf {x} _{r}\right)\left(r'^{2}\right)+\left(\mathbf {x}

_{\theta }\cdot \mathbf {x} _{\theta }\right)\left(\theta '\right)^{2}+\left(\mathbf {x} _{\phi }\cdot
\mathbf {x} _{\phi }\right)\left(\phi '\right)^{2}=\left(r'\right)^{2}+r^{2}\left(\theta
'\right)^{2}+r^{2}\sin ^{2}\theta \left(\phi '\right)^{2}.}

So