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Polar coordinates (view source)
Revision as of 18:21, September 28, 2011
, 18:21, September 28, 2011Created page. Hopefully others can help add to it as this concept is much more fundamental and therefore useful to students than a lot of the topology articles.
'''Polar coordinates''' are an alternative way of representing points on the [[coordinate plane]]. Under the standard system, a point is represented as an ordered pair (x, y) of coordinates for distance 'x' along the horizontal axis and distance 'y' along the vertical axis from a fixed point, called the origin. Under the polar coordinate system, a point is represented as an angle <math>\theta</math> from the origin and a distance 'r' extended in that direction. Thus, a point under rectangular coordinates can be transformed to polar coordinates using the following rule:
:<math>
x = rcos(\theta)</math>
:<math>y = rsin(\theta)</math>
:<math>
x = rcos(\theta)</math>
:<math>y = rsin(\theta)</math>