Question:
Consider the Laplace equation within a unit circle, but now in polar coordinates:
The solution is the Poisson integral formula
Now suppose that function is increased slightly, by an amount , and only in a very small interval .
Does the solution change everywhere in the circle, or only in the immediate vicinity of the interval on the boundary at which was changed. What is the sign of the change in if is positive?
Answer:
To simplify this, assume that the new solution is where is the old solution. So is the change in the solution.
You now have for the original solution
Now is only nonzero in the interval from to , so
Now use a little graph to show that for any point not extremely close to the segment from to on the boundary, the denominator of the integrand is about constant, so
Now show that
Then argue that this means that is positive everwhere inside the circle. So the region of influence of the little segment is the interior of the circle, and the temperature increases everywhere.