You must also know how to convert between rectangular and polar coordinates. The formulas are down below.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Polar Coordinates
Today in Mathland we learned about polar coordinates. It's a way of graphing similar to rectangular coordinates. First you fix a point O that is called the pole, and construct from it a ray called the polar axis. Then each point P in the plane can be assigned coordinates in (r, θ).
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polar coordinates and coordinates are basically the same thing. You just use what they give you and find r and theta or x and y. It is quite simple if you stick with the equations. We must memorize the equations for the test. We must also remember that pole is another name for origin.
ReplyDeleteFirst you must know two things: r = directed distance from O to P and theta = directed angle counterclockwise from polar axis to segment OP. To establish the relationship between polar and rectangular coordinates, let the polar axis coincide with the positive x-axis and the pole with the origin.
ReplyDeleteThanks to your help I was able to complete this problem. (r, theta) = (2, pi)
ReplyDeletex= r cos theta = 2 cos pi
y= r sin theta = 2 sin pi
(x, y) = (-2, 0)