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Cartesian coordinate system with a circle of radius 2 centered at the origin marked in red. The equation of a circle is (x − a)2 + (y − b)2 = r2 where a and b are the coordinates of the center (a, b) and r is the radius. Cartesian coordinates are named for René Descartes, whose invention of them in the 17th century revolutionized ...
Unit vector. In mathematics, a unit vector in a normed vector space is a vector (often a spatial vector) of length 1. A unit vector is often denoted by a lowercase letter with a circumflex, or "hat", as in (pronounced "v-hat"). The term direction vector, commonly denoted as d, is used to describe a unit vector being used to represent spatial ...
Right-hand rule. In mathematics and physics, the right-hand rule is a convention and a mnemonic, utilized to define the orientation of axes in three-dimensional space and to determine the direction of the cross product of two vectors, as well as to establish the direction of the force on a current-carrying conductor in a magnetic field.
Coordinate system. The spherical coordinate system is commonly used in physics. It assigns three numbers (known as coordinates) to every point in Euclidean space: radial distance r, polar angle θ ( theta ), and azimuthal angle φ ( phi ). The symbol ρ ( rho) is often used instead of r.
Rotation matrix. In linear algebra, a rotation matrix is a transformation matrix that is used to perform a rotation in Euclidean space. For example, using the convention below, the matrix. rotates points in the xy plane counterclockwise through an angle θ about the origin of a two-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system.
The axes of the original frame are denoted as x, y, z and the axes of the rotated frame as X, Y, Z.The geometrical definition (sometimes referred to as static) begins by defining the line of nodes (N) as the intersection of the planes xy and XY (it can also be defined as the common perpendicular to the axes z and Z and then written as the vector product N = z × Z).
Three-dimensional space. A representation of a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system with the x -axis pointing towards the observer. In geometry, a three-dimensional space ( 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a mathematical space in which three values ( coordinates) are required to determine the position of a point.
In mathematics, the polar coordinate system is a two-dimensional coordinate system in which each point on a plane is determined by a distance from a reference point and an angle from a reference direction. The reference point (analogous to the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system) is called the pole, and the ray from the pole in the ...